Just For Tonight?
by dolally
Summary: FINISHED! - S/B post The Body/Forever - But Buffy hasn't seen Spike since Lover's Walk so no pesky chip.
1. That Night

  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, "I just got so bored".   
**PART ONE**CHAPTER ONE: 

She drew up to the bar and signalled for service. Scanning the optics, the bartender answered her indecision by placing a bottle of vodka and a shot glass in front of her. OK, looked liked this was her 'usual'. She smiled thinly as she handed over a bill and the bartender pocketed it, dismissing any expectation for change she may have had.

"So, what's new?" He asked with a vague, non-committal tone.

She shrugged and grimaced. "Not much, same-old, same-old you know."

The bartender nodded, having satisfied his full repertoire of small talk, he drifted away to serve another customer.

She liked that, the anonymity, the fact that, apart from the odd suspicious glare she had received when she entered the bar, no one bothered her. She'd come a long way for that tonight and here, tonight she could be anyone. 'Anyone', she decided, unlike her usual self, was capable of taking her drink without descending into primitive, Neanderthal territory. Oh, it wasn't going to be pretty, she knew that, she was signing the death warrant of a few million innocent brain cells. But it was just what she needed, just for tonight.

She felt the by-now familiar pain wrench in gut as her brain threw up the regular, yet sporadic image of her mother's body lying there, cold, stiffening and open-eyed on the sofa. She felt herself wince and covered it up by pretending to struggle with the screw top of the vodka bottle. The seal broke with a satisfying crack and she was about to pour herself a shot when something instinctive pulled at her back 

On alert, she scanned the place, her eyes flitting from one head to another through the blue veil of smoke that hung in the stale air. Just the general mix of unsavoury human types, but no, there was something that tweaked her slayer sense, something familiar. Her eyes settled on a particular, unmistakable head.

"Can I get another glass?"

Once the request was delivered she picked up the bottle and glasses and head over towards the bleached head.

It _was_ him.

* * *

She held off slightly behind him and peered over his shoulder to see him nursing half-a-glass of beer between his palms.

"I'm guessing half-empty right?"

His gaze shot up and latched on to her with an almost unnerving predatory glare. His face was hard, his jaw clenched until his eyes flickered with recognition and he deflated slightly. "Slayer." He ground out with a low rumble, his voice marked with annoyance, as if his evening had suddenly got worse.

She pushed aside her Slayer instincts for hardness and reproach and forced a smile. It hurt her face. "Yep, the one and only -- well, actually not the only one but..."

His brows pushed together in confusion and he shook his head before recalling. "Right," he drawled, obviously resenting her presence, "so another little-miss-gym-slip got all Slayer ordained then?"

"Uh-huh, one dies another is called, you know the drill."

His eyes flashed and he eyed her, a hint of his trademark smirk twitching at his lips. "Only too well."

She ignored the shiver that ran through her at the implication of his words and affected an indifferent pose. "Mind if I join you? I have Vodka." She held the bottle up by the neck as if to prove her point and his eyes slid down her arm to the offering. He finally shrugged and she seated herself opposite him.

They stared at each other momentarily, each wondering if the other was going to make a move. When neither shifted, they both visibly relaxed and Spike sat back, his duster creaking around him.

"So, long time, no see?" She balked at her casual phrasing, but then how else was she supposed to address her mortal enemy? She didn't feel much up to death-threats and necro-innuendo tonight. That was for sure.

He sighed and took his time in finding and lighting a cigarette before responding. "Yeah, been a while ain't it? What two, two-and-a-half years? So, what hell's been breaking loose in my absence?"

"Oh, the usual - Big-Evil, death, carnage, and let's not forget the annual threat of apocalypse."

"Apocalypse, really? I've missed me some fun."

"I thought you 'liked this world'?"

He shrugged and tipped his pint glass forward so he could look into the honey-coloured liquid. "Yeah, I did."

"Demons - they're so fickle." She joked but it fell flat and she looked at him properly for the first time. Something was different. He was all... (Broody?) Not a word she ever thought she'd find herself associating with him but she recognised the signs all too well. His cigarette lay forgotten in the ashtray and she watched it burn down to the filter.

"So, the Slayer saved the world again" He said without looking up from his beer.

Her mood darkened and the words were out of her mouth before she realised. "Can you not call me that? Not tonight."

He glanced up at her, his body jerked with a snort of silent laughter. "Tonight she wants to be a woman of mystery?" She didn't reply and he took that as an affirmative response. "Sure, love, I'll think of something -"

"That'll do."

He paused, his lips parting slightly and his gaze inverting as he thought over what he had just said. "What? 'Love'?"

She nodded and he shook his head.

"Whatever." His gaze threatened to fall back to his beer only to flicker back up to hers. The smirk made its first proper appearance of the night. "So... '_Love_', tell me. What's a nice girl like you doing in a nasty little hovel like this?" His arm made a swaying motion at their surroundings.

Scoffing at the tongue-in-cheek use of an age-old chat-up line, her face took on an expression of mock-defiance. "I wanted a drink?"

"So I see."

"You think it's a bit much?"

He shrugged. "It does the trick." 

"Come on then, drink up." She fingered the Vodka bottle suggestively. "I've got the good-stuff right her and I _know_ you want some."

Chuckling, he picked up his beer, drained the glass with two or three gulps and gasped, his eyes wide from the rush. "Fill me up."

* * *

Her expression contorted as the caustic liquid filled her mouth and left a fiery trail down her throat. She spluttered and groaned at the instant nausea. "People actually _like_ this stuff?"

He laughed. "No but, like I said - It serves a purpose." He downed his shot, his face only registering the slightest ripple of a reaction. "I could say it gets easier but I'd be lying."

"Well if -" She stopped dead, not wanting to look in his eyes for fear of having her dread confirmed. Slowly her eyes lifted to his and there it was. Sympathy. Her limbs steeled themselves to leave. Escapism was always her first and last resort lately. "You _know_?!"

His face remained neutral but his eyes were infinite with something she decided maybe wasn't quite sympathy. (Empathy? No. What would he know about grief?)

"Word gets around--especially if it concerns you."

She said nothing but as she felt a dark wash of negative emotion roll along her spine she knew she had to stay. It was anger, but it was something. So better than the numb nothingness she had got to know intimately these past couple of weeks.

"She was a good women. I liked her."

She heard a noise, something between a scoff and a snort and took a moment to realise it had come from her.

"Maybe it's not too comforting, coming from me but -- She made the best hot-chocolate I've ever tasted and ... well, I wouldn't have eaten her, put it that way."

"Coming from you that's..." She had an enormous urge to say 'thanks'. (Oh my God, did I just say that? Could tonight get any more wiggy?)

"No problem."

"So, just to check. While you're here... with me, your crazy whore of a girlfriend's not out _there_ happy-mealing on my patch, is she?"

His eyes flashed and she could sense his muscles tense with anger but as quickly as it had flared, it was gone. Only to be replaced with his slack, almost apathetic posture as he sank back down into his seat.

She realised something then. He was heartbroken. It was as plain as the scar on his eyebrow. He flipped a beer mat off the side of the table and didn't bother to try and catch it.

"So the fail-safe get-her-back plan failed?"

"No, it worked... for a while we were happy."

"Where is she now?"

He shrugged and twirled his shot glass between his fingers. "She goes wherever the wind takes her." His fingers twitched out a piano-playing motion and for a moment he was far away, so far away.

"OK, this just won't do," she poured out some more shots and waited for him to return to her. "From now on, we're strangers. Two people who have never met, drawn together for the sole and magnificent purpose of getting as drunk as the proverbial skunks."

He smirked and picked up his glass, holding it out for a toast. "I'll drink to that."

They clinked glasses and downed their shots.

"Urgg-err!"

* * *

She'd been pacing herself, she really had. One shot to every three he downed. After her forth, her head began to swim and now, after her sixth, her drinking partner had somehow managed to clone himself - Twice.

"Is there something in a Vampire's constitution that makes them more liquor-friendly?" She wondered vaguely and aloud.

"No, there's just something about your constitution that makes you a supreme light-weight."

"Hey," she began to protest but lost her thread of thought all to easily when his glazed eyes danced with smug humour. "Pig."

He chuckled and re-filled their glasses.

"Here's to being strangers." She said before gulping down her shot.

"OK--but if you were a stranger, I would have drained you already."

"And if you were a stranger, I would have staked you already."

"So much for foreplay."

She tried to suppress her giggle but it forced it's way out through her nose and mouth, spraying him.

He made a show of wiping his three faces with the back of his three hands and gave her a mock-glare. He reached for the bottle again, only even when drunk, her reactions were faster than his. A chipped-black nailed hand closed over hers on the battle.

"OK, yours." He conceded as a means to withdraw. He eyed his offending hand wearily before running it through his hair. "I kinda prefer the mortal enemy vibe anyway."

"Yeah," she admitted, "I guess -- history and all that."

"Which leads me to ask. My Grand-sire, the love of your life--Tell me - just how _is_ the son of a bitch?"

She didn't realise what she'd done until he felt the pain sting her hand and saw him lunge for the bottle to retaliate with only to knock it over. The little remaining liquid it contained spilling over the table. She heard him whisper a curse or two as they both set to mopping the spillage up with beer mats.

Somewhere in the melee their fingertips met and they both pulled back as if burnt. Looking up into his eyes found what she expected to see and knew he would find the same reflected in her eyes and so she said it:

"Drive me hone?"

He was silent for what she could only class as an eternity and even when he nodded his assent she wished he could have spoken.

* * *

In the alley outside the bar they came to a stop. The coolness of the air hit her instantaneously, invaded her senses and, most unfortunately, sobered her up. She watched him furtively as he lit a cigarette, the amber glow of the lighter highlighting his face for a brief moment. She knew, from the hard set of his jaw, that he was thinking exactly the same as her: (This should not be happening).

It went against everything she knew. Everything Giles had drilled her in, but for some reason she couldn't stop this. She opened her mouth to say something, but it wasn't her voice she heard. She spun around with a groan to face the game-faced Vampires closing in on them. Running through the log her mind she remembered the stake in her coat pocket.

"Don't I _ever_ get the night off?"

"It would appear not."

She felt Spike step forward and align himself with her. The Vampires started and backed off a couple of paces under the pressure of his glare.

"She yours?"

Spike smirked. "No. I was just off to get myself someone more... substantial to eat."

"_Substantial_?! You do not _get_ anymore substantial than Slayer blood."

They turned to face each other. There was that nostalgic expression again and his eyes flitted down her body and back up to her face.

"I know."

(Killer of two Slayers, of course he knows.)

"_You're_ the Slayer?"

She rolled her eyes and reached for a stake. "Yes, I am -- and you should be star-struck." Turning she felt another wave of inebriation roll over her and wavered slightly as she wielded the stake.

"Steady on, Love."

"Do you _mind_, you're putting me off." She spun round and Spike was forced to lean back as her stake stabbed at the air close to his chest. He said nothing, just grinned and took a step back, indicating that the floor was hers. But she was alone on stage now, the Vampires had taken their chance to escape from not-so-certain death.

"Now look what you've done!"

"What _I've_ done? If you were that desperate for a fight, Sl-Love, you could have picked a dozen in there, if you're still up for it when you sober up, then maybe I'll humour you later on... As for now, I think what you really need is some nice, hot -"

"What?!" She yelled, feeling her mind fall straight to the gutter. She concentrated heavily on putting her stake away.

"Black coffee, Love. Nice, hot black coffee... sober you up."

"Oh... I mean no! I'm not drunk!"

"That so?" He stared at her and flicked his cigarette stub into the shadows before walking away from her. "It's what, twenty miles back to Sunnydale? If you're not sober now, you sure as hell will be by the time you get home."

Cursing under her breath she ran and caught up with him. "I hate you."

"Funny that," he grinned, "I hate you too... Ah, the joy of requited feeling."

They turned a few alleys in silence and came upon his Desoto. (Some things never change.) She smiled, when in mock-chivalry he opened a door for her.

Climbing in, she was engulfed by a scent. It was the scent of tobacco, of alcohol, of the bar they had just been in. The scent of him. Snuggling into the nest of the passenger seat she gave into the weariness that pressed on her and closed her eyes.

--> 


	2. The Morning? After

  
**PART ONE**CHAPTER TWO: 

She drifted awake and smiled into the half-moment of bliss before she became aware of who or where she was. And then she remembered. Slayer. Dawn. Her Mother on the sofa. Emitting a low groan she squirmed as grief and alcohol-induced nausea simultaneously twisted in her gut. Writhing and struggling against the bedding that bound her she managed to free herself and blindly lunge towards the bathroom.

* * *

Panting, she leant against the side of the bath and sat with her clammy head in her hands, recovering from the involuntary exertion. After a few moments the surging and throbbing in her head had ceased enough for her to contemplate standing. Clutching the lip of the sink she weakly dragged herself up onto her feet and stared into the reflection in the mirror.

It took a moment for her to recognise herself. The red eyes sunk in a grey, pale and yet flushed skin, the thin and dry mouth pouting slightly. But there was an expression in her eyes, a sadness that she recognised only too well. She groaned and opened the mirror cabinet with only one thought in her head. (Aspirin.)

She chased the Aspirin down with half-a-pint of water and splashed her face with cold water, startling flashes of memory into the forefront of her mind. (Spike?)

On instinct she clutched at her neck. Nothing, still a pulse. She was still alive. She still had a reflection. (Which is what? Good? Bad? Weird?)

(Oh My God I fell _asleep_ in his car?!) She didn't remember anything else past that and yet she was still here. (_Here_!) She'd woken up all unharmed, fully clothed and ... (tucked in?)

She became aware of an insistent, high-pitched noise and instinctively hunted down the source to the telephone in her room. She picked up the receiver and made an indistinct croak for a greeting. Her mind was still reeling from processing the jigsawed recollections and trying to fill in the many blanks with imagined scenarios ranging from the probable to the impossible.

"What?" She cut into the incomprehensible vocal noise that was coming over the line.

"Buffy?" Ah, a word she recognised, she still knew her own name. That was a start. Her eyebrows knitted as she concentrated on the voice talking at her.

"Giles?" (OK doing well, Buffy.)

"Are you alright Buffy? You seem a little bit, um, well, distracted. Is there anything wrong?"

"No, nothing." (Everything. Help me. Nothing makes sense. Is this what drink does to you? Or is it just a Spike special?) "Um, are you OK? I mean what's with the early morning call? I mean it's..." She glanced at the clock but failed to make sense of what the hands and figures were trying to tell her.

"It's _afternoon_ Buffy. Twelve thirty-seven to be exact. Have you only just woken up?"

"Erm, yeah. Last night... Vampire problem." She said absently, pushing open a window in order to refresh the stale bedroom air that threatened to stifle her.

"Oh, anything particularly troublesome? Shall I call the others?"

"No." She replied almost too eagerly. She leant out of the window and inhaled deeply. That was when she saw it - The Desoto. Parked outside her house which meant -- "No it's OK... I'm on it -- Giles is there a reason for this call only -"

"Oh, well yes. You see I -- I had a call from Angel last night -"

"Angel?!" It was only one question but it encapsulated so many others - (What? How? Why? What did he say? How was he? Why not call me?)

"Um, yes. H-he -- it was purely business, Buffy. He merely called to inform us -- to warn us that we might be getting another visit from Spike."

"Spike?" The sound emerged from her suddenly tight throat as a strangled squeak and she internally reprimanded herself.

"W-well yes. Apparently he and Drusilla were in L.A. selling their own unique brand of mayhem..." She heard Giles take in a heavy breath. "Well to cut a long-story short Drusilla is dead, and in his own twisted way, Spike blames you."

Her heart stopped while her mind went into overdrive, dredging up Polaroid moments of the previous night and examining each one for signs of his grief. It was all there - the dark flint of pain that ran through his features at every mention of her name, the bitterness in his laugh, the pleading loss of his eyes. (He blames me?) She expected the panic to set in but somehow she couldn't even summon it. Spike was in her house and he had it in his mind to kill her! ... But then why hadn't he? (I was pretty much defenceless last night. He could have -)

"Buffy? Are you still there?"

"Yeah. I'm fine -- Look no biggy. I'll keep a look out OK? Bye" With that she hung up and forgot all else but one thing. One mission. Find Spike.

* * *

She charged down the stairs and was on her way into the kitchen when the same instinct that had found him last night drew her into the blacked-out lounge. Her heartbeat quickened as she crossed the threshold. Every time she entered the lounge part of her relived the experience of finding her mother's body. She swallowed down the ghosts of her shock and panic and with an about turn she focused upon the image of Spike sat there, closed- eyed, cold and rigid in the armchair.

She stepped closer to him, drawn in by his tranquil, breathless sleep. Instead of the starkly blank canvas of death his features were awash with a look of peace. Sank low in his seat, his legs were spread casually before him and his arms crossed, clutching an empty bottle of whiskey to his chest. It was then she noticed it.

The sound that emerged from her throat startled her. It felt so long since she'd heard it - Laughter that is. A quiet little giggle shook her shoulders but she caught it quickly. Calming her amusement she leant in to examine his chest closer. Nail polish, Dawn's nail polish - a garish shade of bright pink. He'd painted a heart-shaped target on his shirt with nail polish! She struggled to keep her face neutral should he wake up suddenly and straightened up, her eyes wandering to the table beside him.

She reached out with both hands, one grasping the stake and the other the piece of paper. She glanced at the stake and shook her head. Her first instinct was to toss it away but she reconsidered and deposited it in the waistband of her jeans, it fitting familiarly into the niche at the small of her back. She then turned her attention the barely legible words scrawled on the paper and read.

_So this is not the way I imagined it. I always hoped for daring glory, a fight to the death but beggars can't be choosers and dying in your sleep can't just be a luxury afforded to old buggers._

Call it what you will: misguided sentimentality, pride, even suicidal stupidity but I always wanted my end to come by the Slayer's hand. Your hand. And all things considered I thought I'd be generous (or is that apathetic?) and make it as easy as possible for you.

You'll notice the target and the stake. Not that I'm questioning your aim but we want this as bloodless as possible don't we? Er... well maybe that's just me.

Failing that I've positioned myself directly in line so if were just to pull back the curtain a little bit then... well me having a slight sun allergy and all that.

Ever yours, Slayer

Spike. (William the Bloody Grateful.)

Coming to the end her smile faded. Pathetic as it was, she could still see it for what it was - a desperate plea for someone to end his torment. A glint of blue caught her eye and her eyes flickered back to his face. His eyes were closed but the peace had evaporated.

"Spike... Come on, Spike. I know you're awake." She kicked at his foot lightly but with enough force to cause a flare of pain in her bare toes as they came into contact with his hard steel-toe-capped boot. She cursed and momentarily reconsidered using the stake before he opened his eyes but it was too late.

He groaned and glared up at her with a deep frown. "Bloody hell, Slayer. I only asked one little favour of you."

"I let you leave town in a non-dusty state last time you were here. You're all favoured out -- Besides I've already vacuumed in here once this week."

"Remind me to leave you to the milkmen the next time you express a desire to sleep on the front lawn."

"What are you talking about?"

He repositioned himself and put the bottle down between his feet. "Took me a right job getting you in last night. You were falling about all over the place - landed face down on the grass out there," he motioned at the window. "And then you started threatening the poor, innocent daisies." He applied a mock scowl. "It was very disturbing."

She smiled sheepishly at the imagery wandering over her mind's eye like a slow-running movie-reel.

"Yeah in the end I had to _carry_ you up to your room. -- No easy task, I can tell you."

She'd suspected as much but she couldn't help the streak of panic that flitted its way across her forehead.

"Not quite how I imagined getting the Slayer into bed but there you go -"

"You've _imagined_ getting me into bed?"

"What, uh... No! I -" He averted her eyes and shook his head. "I was just speaking figuratively. -- Took me three tries to find your room. I see the little one takes-after her big sis in the tragic-bad-taste department. -- Where is the Bit anyway?" 

"Slu -" She paused. (Wow them monks really did a thorough job.) "At her friends. Kind of a weekend long Slumber party. I figured it'd do her good to get away from here, have some fun. I mean -" She scanned the room, her eyes settling on the dreaded sofa.

"Bit of escapism?"

"Exactly." She whispered and when she looked back at him she knew they were both having the same thought. Their eyes met for the briefest moment. "So what about some breakfast? I'm all out of blood but I could rustle up some eggs and sausages."

"I'd prefer a healthy dose of Redwood to the chest but seen as that's not on the menu right now..." He stood and followed her down the hall. "I just hope you've got ketchup -- That way I can at least pretend."

"You're disgusting, Spike."

* * *

"What are you doing?"

"Making coffee. What does it look like?"

"No, I don't mean that. -- I mean what are you doing with me? You won't stake me - fine -- but why I am still _here_?"

She became almost too aware of his presence behind her and concentrated heavily on stirring the sugar into her coffee.

"I know. A-about Drusilla." She dare not meet his eyes but without turning round she could sense his countenance shifting, stiffening. When he spoke again his voice had taken on this forced harshness that cut through her so much she had to close her eyes for the duration.

"Oh. So this is what? Some kind of tea-and-sympathy pity session? If -"

"No -" She spun around to face him, her exacerbation matching his. (Does he have to keep questioning this? No, of course he does -- This should _not_ be happening.) "It's _called_ understanding. You... _understand_. You read me and I don't have to spell anything out to you... Or at least I thought I didn't."

He hung his head. "No, you don't. I'm sor- It's just this," he indicated the space between them. "It's weird."

"I know... I know. It's wigging me out on a major scale, but for some reason I-I don't want you to go." She brandished the spoon she was still holding at him. "So you can just stay there and shut up." She smirked before adding: "You're putting me off."

He playfully re-enacted his zip-up and step-back moves from the previous night and she turned back to her task. (Erm... milk, right. I need milk.)

She headed for the fridge, suddenly all-too-aware of her movements and his eyes on her. Getting the milk and closing the door she turned to face him. "OK, so it would appear that Silent-Spike is even more disturbing than Yappy-Spike. -- Maybe you should still be allowed to talk."

"What, do I have your permission to speak once more? Oh most omnipotent and bossy Chosen One."

"That's more like it. That's familiar." She smiled and upended the milk carton only for nothing to come out. She shook the carton lightly - she could have sworn it weighed like it had something in it. Another shake and its true contents were released. A mass of curdled lactose plopped into her cup, splashing brown liquid onto the work-top.

"Oh great!" She searched around for something to mop up the mess with when Spike handed her a wad of kitchen roll. Their fingertips connected when she took it from him and they locked eyes. "Again. Familiar."

"Yeah, deja-vu." His other hand came up as if to touch her face but he stopped short and they broke contact. She turned back to the coffee disaster and then paused. Last night was repeating itself only this time...

Facing him again she allowed herself to properly look at him, with her fingertips tingling slightly from the cold contact of his hand, she stared. So much had changed in her life the past two-and-a-half years and there he stood, a constant amidst all the chaos.

Maybe not so constant, she realised with a curious frown that the staple red shirt had gone. In its place was a new but similarly flattering acquisition, a black silk jacquard shirt loosely buttoned. The sharp contrasts of black against his stark, white skin and a slicked-back plane of platinum blond hair were startling. He stirred, uncomfortable under her gaze but she didn't relent.

His shifting caused the light to cast new areas of his face into light-and- shade relief, highlighting his cheekbones and darkening the hollows of his cheeks.

"Din't your mother ever tell you it was rude to stare?"

She started and they locked gazes once more. Only to glimpse another glint of that understanding she craved in those brilliant-blue orbs - the only colour in his entire being. She was transfixed and before she could stop herself she was reaching across the divide to touch him. His eyelids fluttered as her fingertips made contact and she began to trace the arch of his left cheekbone.

There was a ripple of the skin under her touch and when she refocused she saw that he had slid into game face. She knew what he was doing but, unrelenting she continued her exploration of his face, her fingers gliding over the ridges of his forehead and down his nose. There'd be no pretending where he was concerned, no pretending he was human. This was what he was, her enemy, but tonight...

"My, _my_ grandma, what big teeth you have." She dared to meet his questioning yellow-eyed stare.

"All the better to eat you with my dear." His human features re-emerged with the same ripple and his she traced the outline of his mouth. She caught her breath as she felt the cool tip of his tongue meet her finger and draw her in. Teeth closed around the tip and his hand came up to seize hers. His eyes burning into hers as he withdrew her finger, bluntly scraping it against his teeth, she moaned in response.

"I wouldn't do that, Love. -- Not unless you want me to do something you're gonna regret."

"Like what?" She defiantly met his impassioned gaze to witness his features change again in the split second before he lunged for her, his weight forcing back against the wall and knocking the wind out of her.

Panic surged through her as his mouth found her neck. She reached round to the small of her back for the stake in the waistband of her jeans.

"Is _this_ what you want?" He hissed against the junction of her jaw and ear lobe. "Something to make it all go away?" He touched the three scars on the other side of her neck, sending small shivers of anticipation down her spine. "I see you've been here before."

She made no response. She could make no response. Fingering the stake she waited for the inevitable, the sharp pain of fangs sinking into her flesh that she knew so well by now.

But it never came.

After a moment she realised that she was shaking but not from fear or pain, concentrating against the swarming confusion in her head, she isolated the source to the tendrils of pleasure that were fluttering from where he had begun to nuzzle at her neck. She gasped and as he nipped at her jugular vein with now blunt teeth.

His chest vibrated as he emitted a low chuckle and he pressed more weight onto her. His hard torso pinning her to the wall while his tongue and teeth sucked and bit at the tender skin of her neck. A hand smoothed its way down her side, finally closing over the one at her back and discovering the stake. But instead of disarming her, fingers interlaced with hers.

Her free hand snaked its way over his shoulder. Her fingers dancing over his shoulder blade and immersing themselves in the short curls at the nape of his neck. She closed her eyes to the bliss slowly billowing from her neck, every pore tingling with pleasure as...

She opened her eyes with a moan of protest as he suddenly stopped and pushed himself away. His palms flat on the wall beside her head. The arm around his neck reflexively tightened and prevented him from pulling away any further and she locked him in a wide-eyed, breathless stare. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she became aware of a pressure against her thigh.

"You feel that?"

She could only nod in response, struggling to control her erratic breathing.

"I was trying to make a point and believe me _that_ was not it... This shouldn't be happening." He attempted to pull away again but she held him fast, ignoring the flash of anger in his eyes and the exacerbated sigh he emitted.

"No!" She gasped. "This isn't supposed to be happening... but I feel it... you feel it -" She smiled and pulled at his bottom lip with her index finger to reveal his lower teeth. "Hell - even this wall feels it." She released her hold of him, whilst still holding him prisoner with her eyes and began to work through his shirt buttons, exposing the smooth, translucent flesh beneath. He closed his eyes as she raked her nails down his chest. With the flat of a palm against his abdomen she sneaked her finger ends into the waistband of his jeans, the other hand grappling with his belt buckle.

"They'll be no -" He grabbed her hands to stop her and bore his gaze into her. "They'll be no ... pretending -- No pretending... I'm someone else."

She nodded. She understood. "Same goes for you."

Moving into her again, he buried his face into her hair and inhaled her scent. His hands working under her top, massaging upwards and sliding the material away so that the flesh of their abdomens met in an exhilarating fusion of warm and cool skin.

She clutched at his shoulders as he began to grind slowly against her, the friction of denim against denim sending shudders of stimulation along the length of her groin right to her core. Instinctively she opened her legs and arched into him, seeking more pressure as her entire body ached for him with a rising urgency.

His lips found her neck again and he began an excruciatingly slow ascent of butterfly kisses up to her jaw line as his hands found her breasts, catching her swollen nipples through the fabric of her bra. When her eyes shot open she looked straight into his.

His pupils were fully dilated, darkening his eyes and as their gazes locked there was a moment of mutual acknowledgement, a final assent before his lips finally descended upon hers.

---> 


	3. Tomorrow

  
**PART ONE**CHAPTER THREE: 

She drifted to consciousness as a passive passenger on a plane of weightless feeling that transcended her dreamless state and bought her reluctantly back into herself. The familiar remembrance triggered the familiar muscle-clenching squirm only this time something was different and she stalled into complete stillness at what her body was telling her. Opening her eyes she focused upon the mass of tousled blonde curls nestled at her shoulder and as her senses awaken fully she became more and more aware of his weight spread over her and -

He was still inside her? Static images of the afternoon deluged her brain and panic rose in her, filling her stiffened muscles with kinetic potential.

She didn't have time to contemplate her options as he stirred, awakened - no doubt - by her change in countenance and the thumping in her chest. He emitted a soft sound somewhere between a groan and a purr and nestled into her warmth. She couldn't hold back the small smile that flitted across her lips as she watched him or deny the yearning that was filling her body with waves of heat emanating from her groin.

She gasped as involuntarily he responded to her stimulus and he expanded to fill her. A hand began to wander the expanse of her torso, came to rest on her right breast and began to softly knead her flesh. Her breath deepened as she was lulled under into the depths of passion. Her internal muscles contracted spasmodically around him and he responded with motion, sliding almost fully out of her before re-emerging.

Closing her eyes she gave into the sensations that were washing over her. Slipping an arm around his neck and a leg around his thigh she met him motion for motion. She glanced down at his head, still submerged in the nook of her shoulder and wondered vaguely if he was even fully awake.

She got her answer when all of a sudden, he jolted and ceased all momentum. She held her breath as his head lifted and twisted slightly and he sniffed at the skin of her neck. The muscles in his arms hardened as he lifted himself up onto his elbows and regarded her with widening eyes.

Silence sealed them in a bubble of notching pressure and she forgot how to breathe. She tried and failed to apply a neutral expression as his eyes wandered over her, taking in his precariously placed hand, their nakedness and finally the extent of their intertwined state. She nervously bit at her lip waiting for the answers that only his face could provide.

The time it took his face to turn back up to hers seemed like it could be measured only in eternities and when they were eye-to-eye it took another eternity for them both to focus. But as their eyes met the effect was immediate. His eyes were smiling and the sight warmed her. All she could see was the blue and it surrounded her, flooded her. A sensation of both falling into and away from him took her and her brain swam as a strange kind of sea-sickness rocked her insides to the point of mild queasiness only to be quelled by real motion as they began to move together once more.

* * *

A quick glance at the clock reassured her for the umpteenth time that it was indeed patrol hour. Her body clock had been severely disorientated by their exhaustive activities and unnatural sleep patterns. (Well maybe not unnatural for him.) She stole another glance at him, as he lay sleeping in her bed. He looked anything but unnatural if you could get past the not-breathing thing. But even so, every so often he would shift slightly and air would hitch momentarily in his chest until a deadly still of equilibrium drifted back over him like soft blossom.

She shook herself from her increasingly tempting thoughts and quietly toed out of her room. With her back against the door she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, earthing herself against the wood. It was of no use as upon opening her eyes she was confronted with evidence to support her fevered memories. Skewed picture frames lined the walls and many more littered the floor, knocked off their hangings by their almost violent, desperate stumbles they had made on the way to her bedroom. Putting the pictures back to rights she contemplated the stairs with dread.

She had reason to fear, as every step seemed to mock her by triggering new recollections. Her back twinged where the edges of steps had dug into her spine and as she moved sore, chaffed patches on her thighs complained against her jeans. At the foot of the stairs she was confronted with the biggest trigger of all. His duster shed - like all of their clothes - in hasty, desperate passion. Picking up the leather she was about to place it over the banister post when some instinct and more than a shred of curiosity made her rethink.

Standing firm she draped the material over her shoulders and threaded her arms though. The result was as ridiculous as she had expected. It completely engulfed her in mass, the arms hanging down way past her hands and the hem scraping the floor. She smiled as she wrapped the folds around herself, breathing in the scent that enveloped her. His scent. She thought how ironic it was that this afternoon had been the first time she had seen him without his coat. (Is he even Spike without this coat?) It was just so entirely... him. (He wouldn't want to be without it then... would he?)

Grasping a handful of stakes from her stash she made her way out of the door.

* * *

By the time she made it the last cemetery on her rounds, she had perfected an air of forced nonchalance that she used to ignore the blatant and amused stares of passers-by. (Have they never seen a bad fashion decision before?) She marched determinedly on with her mission at hand. The two newly risen vampires were nothing nearly representing a challenge and disheartened, she soon headed back for home, reapplying her very own brand resolve face.

There were some passers-by she could not simply ignore.

"Buffy? Buffy is that you under there?"

She groaned internally and turned slowly around to face an understandably confused Xander and Anya.

She attempted a casual greeting. "Hi guys."

"Hey Buff. Almost didn't recognise you there for a moment -"

"Yes what the _hell_ - and I stress the word hell here - are you wearing? It makes you look fat." Anya perfectly demonstrated what she had in common with Cordelia.

"Anya!" Xander breathed in an exacerbated sigh he seemed to reserve only for admonishing his girlfriend.

"What? I was only passing comment. -- She'll thank me tomorrow morning when she sees that coat in the harsh light of day -"

(Not much chance of that, seen as I'll only ever see him in indirect light.) "Thankyou. Anya. _Really_. But I have already realised my grave error and was just in the process of returning home in order to bury my head in shame."

"It's okay." Anya reached out to touch her arm in conspiring friendship. "Things are never as bad as they seem--Oh, I mean -"

The blow was blunted but still there and undeniable and she reeled at the reminder of her grief. She was seized by a desire to be home and fixing her stare on the road markings was all she could do to stop herself making a break for it.

"Anya, you know how we were discussing that silly notion of thinking before you speak? Well this is one of those examples I couldn't think of at the time." She knew that if she looked up he would meet her eyes with such sorrow and so she kept her eyes fixed downwards collecting enough energy to summon a false smile. "Are you -"

"Yeah, fine." She looked up with said smile. "I'll see you two at the magic shop tomorrow. Okay? Good." She waved stiffly, almost too enthusiastically seizing her opportunity to escape. She turned and began to move away, her mind focusing heavily on each step. As she turned the corner of Main Street she heaved a sigh of relief and the tension drained from her shoulders as the tears came. She welcomed the rain that began to pour and disguised her tears. With equal amounts of fear and dread she made her way, slowly to an empty home that was both her haven and her constant reminder. Only it wasn't empty was it? Was it?

Her feet picked up their pace as the rain came down harder and she wrapped herself closer in the shelter of the coat.

* * *

It surprised her enough to stop her in her tracks. She didn't know what she had been expecting but somehow this wasn't it.

She stood in the middle of her road watching him through the distorting pelts of rain as he emerged from under the bonnet of his car and flung the hood down with a forceful and frustrated yell of : "Bloody Hell!"

His hair was plastered in loose curls to his forehead and he smoothed it back with raked fingers as he stood staring indignantly at the rusting heap that passed as his car. His anger seemed to ebb away with the drips from his shirt and it was then that he became aware of her.

Her breath caught in throat as he turned his head to look at her from his solid stance. They stood firm and unyielding on their respective spots, neither knowing what to say. It was she who broke the silence.

"You're soaked."

"Uh-huh. You too."

She gestured towards the car. "You were leaving."

"Well, yeah, planning on. Seems the car has other ideas."

"Without your coat? You were leaving without your _coat?_"

"I guess something's should be left behind. Looks better on you anyway." His eyes dropped to the ground and his hair flopped forward once more.

"Stick around?" She didn't know where she had found the voice the words were out of her mouth before the thought had even formed. Maybe Anya was having an effect on her. Maybe she liked it.

His brow knitted as if he too was questioning her words and he looked back at her, his body turning to fully face her. "What until you get bored and decide to stake me?"

"I thought that's what you wanted."

"Not anymore. Not... after..."

"Then, what?--Where? -"

"Where do we go from here?"

She nodded and he mirrored her passive shrug.

"You know what I am... what I do. And what you do. We couldn't be more incompatible -"

"Oh? I thought we were very compatible." She interrupted as a means to steer the conversation away from its inevitable destination. Away from what was inevitably going to come between them.

He smiled, he couldn't help himself and so did she. They both took a step closer and stalled.

"I-I can't think of tomorrow, or the next day. All I can do is concentrate on today and getting through this day. -- I can't even begin to comprehend the future. I'm the Slayer - I don't have a future."

He scoffed then and one look was all she needed to tell him to explain himself.

"I'm a Vampire, Love... All I have is future--Unless you decide to punctuate my full stop with a piece of wood that is."

Another shared smile. Another step. Another stall.

"Well then give me a future and I'll give you a present." She cringed at how that sounded and, trust him, he picked her up on it.

"A present, huh? What, like time or a gift?"

Another step, he was touchable now. Within reach but her arms were weighed down at her sides.

"Well time could be my gift. I have this inescapable feeling that it's a limited-term offer. That I don't have a lot of it left."

There was something in his eyes that responded to that and a hand came out and clutched at her cheek before dropping back to his side. They stood in silence for a few thousand eternities.

"What time is it?"

"What?"

"Time, Slayer. You have a watch under there?"

"Oh, umm." She dug under the draping cuffs of his coat and eventually found her wrist. Struggling to read the hands in the dark and wet, she eventually made out. "Eleven fifty-five."

"Eleven fifty-five? Well there you go. Don't think of it as tomorrow. Think of it as five minutes from now. What do you want from those five minutes, Love?"

She cleared the space between them and placed a hand against his hard chest. "You."

"Are you sure. Because you don't just say that and take it back. There's no going back from here. I mean -"

"Is that a promise?"

He looked down at her uncomprehendingly. As if he thought she may disappear any second. Be erased and wash away in streaks of rain. His hand returned to her cheek. "Yeah, I guess it is."

"Then for God's sake, kiss me."

And as he moved in those eternities stretched out between them once more but also ahead of them and all around them, climbing and circling above them as their passion soared once more.

"You were lying." She gasped as they parted lips and rested forehead against forehead.

"What? When?"

"When you said you were just passing through. You were on your way to kill me."

He laughed and nodded slightly, careful not to jar her. "Yeah, I guess I was. And yeah, I guess I did."

"What?!" Panic surged through her and she backed away only to elicit another chuckle from him.

"Poetic metaphor, Love?"

A blank stare was her only viable response and she took refuge in it. He smiled and placed his hands on her shoulders, willing her forward towards the house. She walked freely with him, relaxing slightly against his chest.

"Maybe you'd better explain this 'poetic metaphor' thing to me... With a practical demonstration, of course." She opened the door and stepped inside, grabbing a handful of his sodden shirt and dragging him forcefully in after her.

"I think that can be arranged." He smiled into another kiss and reached behind him and closed the door on all the unanswered and unanswerable questions that barked at the threshold, seeking admittance.

--> 


	4. Today was Tomorrow Yesterday

  
**PART ONE**CHAPTER FOUR: 

"Stop it!" She batted a hand away as it dipped in the dishwater to find hers.

"What? I'm helping." He protested, threading his arms around her waist and pressing himself against her back. His head rested on her right shoulder and she smiled internally at the intimacy of their stance. 

"No, you're distracting me. Again." She tapped him on the nose with a wooden spoon leaving a blob of soapsuds that he didn't bother to wipe away. 

"Me? Never. Just forget I'm here, go back to doing... whatever it is you're doing there." 

"Washing the dishes, Spike. I'm washing the dishes, it hardly ranks high on the male fantasy top-one-hundred." 

"What, are you kidding? The Slayer being all domestic whilst wearing nothing more than a... *very* thin bathrobe, this is the stuff fantasies were made of, or should be." He wriggled against her back, rocking her slightly from side to side.

She scoffed and was about to speak when all thought was expelled from her mind. The hand that had been absently toying with and loosening the knot of her belt slipped inside the material. She caught her breath as cool fingers made contact with the heated flesh of her abdomen. A ring finger dipped into her navel and from there his fingertips tapped a circular rhythm of caresses spiralling gradually outward: Higher, wider and lower. 

"Like I said... forget I'm here." He nuzzled into her neck. 

Her throat emitted some kind of indistinguishable sound as a reply and she gazed uncomprehendingly at the bubbly water her hands were submerged in. Closing her eyes, she gave into the sensations ebbing and flowing from his touch and leant back against him. Her mind rocking with the same peculiar seasickness she now associated with him. 

The circle expanded slowly until finally its arc reached its zenith. Up to trace the under-edge of her breasts, wide and down her right side, following the groove of each rib. His fingers danced over the arch of her hip and down to skip through her curls. 

Her hands emerged from the water with a splash and slammed down onto the worktop in a desperate need for stability as his fingers dipped between her thighs - 

"Hi, Buffy. I'm home." 

The slam of the front door affirmed her fear and they parted with start, fleeing to opposite ends of the kitchen. 

She scrambled with the fastening of her robe, her cheeks burning with interrupted lust and rising panic. She glanced quickly at Spike whose countenance was alternating between menace and nonchalance in an attempt to decide how to act. Imploring him with her eyes he settled into a casual pose, picking up his cocoa and leaning back against the units. He winked at her and she didn't have time to decide whether to be frustrated or reassured by the action as Dawn's head and then body entered the kitchen. 

"Buffy, whose is that car -?" Her sister's eyes widened as she took in the scene and her inquisitive stare settled on Spike. Her brow furrowed as if the sight of him prompted some thought process. "Oh, it's you." She said finally and with a shrug she made her way over to the fridge. "Guess that answers that question." 

Buffy watched in disbelief of the level of indifference Dawn was showing as her sister poured herself a glass of orange juice. "So, your girlfriend dump you again?" 

"Something like that." Spike bowed his head and glanced into the mug he was holding almost protectively to his chest. 

"Thought so. I can smell the cocoa. Did you give him the marshmallows?" 

"Huh?" Buffy grunted, glancing from one to the other. 

"Those little marshmallows, he likes those. Don't you?" 

"Um, yeah. I do." 

"Uh... We don't have any, I don't think." 

"Sure we do." Dawn rummaged in the cupboard behind her and turned up a half-packet of said marshmallows. She threw them almost blindly to him and he caught them easily with his free hand. 

"Thanks." A small smile crossed his lips, an actual genuine smile devoid of his usual sadistic sarcasm. Buffy thought she was seeing things for a moment but no, it was there. 

Again.

"Dawn... you remember him?" 

"Yeah, he's that Vampire that came to the house a couple of years back, all strung-out over some mad woman." Dawn clicked her fingers, trying to grasp something. "S-S-Skipper, right?" 

Spike glared at her momentarily before affirming: "Spike!" 

"Whatever. You do realise Mom's not here to listen to your whining this time though, don't you? I mean she's n-not... she's..." 

"Yeah, so I heard." He nodded and as Dawn mirrored it. 

Buffy had to blink and reassess the scene but it was happening. Dawn liked him? (How is this possible? Someone wake me up now and tell me these past two days have been a dream. Tell me my whole life has been a dream, especially that horrible part where mom died.) 

"Buffy, why are you not dressed, I mean it's -" Dawn paused and her eyes squinted and she looked from Buffy to Spike, her lips forming an 'o' before the sound emerged from her mouth. "Oh...oh right... Well, you sure made the most of me being out of the way, didn't you sis?"

"I - I..." Buffy floundered. "I don't know what you're suggesting, Dawn -"

"Yeah, I just got here." He helped her out and her mind drifted back to something similar, familiar. ('She's a hell on the old skins.') 

"You just got here, huh?" 

"Yeah, right, just popped in for a cuppa." He motioned towards his mug.

"Then where are your shoes and socks?" 

Three sets of eyes fell to his bare feet. His toes wiggled under the sudden attention. "Umm... Just giving them a breather." 

"Skipper, please don't insult my adolescent one-track mind when for once it's on the right track. Besides Buffy's all frumpled, she's never frumpled--I mean, look at her hair." 

Buffy's hand shot to her head and she felt for herself. Her eyes shot to Spike in a glare that said, very loudly: 'How could you not tell me?' He shrugged casually and the smirk was back. 

God, she hated him. 

"You have bed-hair at this time of the evening. You never have bed-hair. Not even after you and Riley -" 

"Riley?" His interest diverged upon the name and Buffy tried in vain to silence Dawn with a deep-throated cough. 

"Her last boyfriend." Dawn said matter-of-factly. She took a sip of juice before continuing. She was loving this, Buffy could tell. "You know her type: tall, broad-shouldered, full of muscle... only not much between the ears." 

Spike's face clouded darker with every word and when he looked at Buffy she was helpless to do anything more than gape like a fish. 

"Maybe he compensated for it in other areas though, I-" 

"Dawn!" Dawn started and stared at her sister with teenage defiance. "What?"

"Enough, OK. You were right." Dawn came up with a self-satisfied smirk of her own. 

"I knew it! Don't worry, I won't tell Mo-" She stopped herself and as her eyes fell to the floor silence fell on the three of them stretching and growing in life-spans of eternities. "No. Of course I won't." Dawn met Buffy's eyes and they shared a moment of silent reassurance. "So, what's for dinner?" 

Spike's stomach chose that moment to make its presence known, earning him an amused glance from both Buffy and Dawn. 

"Dinner sounds good. Could just fancy a nice redhead." The amusement faded and was replaced by disgust. "Er... I mean -" 

"I'll get you some blood from the butchers." Buffy interrupted him. "I'll get us some take-out whilst I'm out. How 'bout that?" She glanced at Dawn who responded with an enthusiastic nod. "...Only I can't go out and leave you here can I?" 

"Sure you can." 

"No, Dawn... I can't leave you by yourself. You know that." 

"Well I won't be on my own will I?" Dawn looked pointedly at Spike and that was when it hit. 

Trust. That's what it all came down to. That's what he been trying to tell her last night. She looked to him and he stared blankly back, offering nothing. It had to be her decision and she had to make it final. Either way she couldn't go back. Either way she would pay hugely if she made the wrong choice. Those eternities began multiplying in earnest. 

Taking a deep breath she steeled herself before giving him a look which said it all: 'Anything happens to her, I *will* stake you.' He nodded almost imperceptibly and she went to get dressed.

* * *

Entering the back door, she placed their paper bag wrapped dinners on the kitchen sideboard and was about to call out when a scream cut her off. Her heart stopped. 

Dawn. 

Switching instantly to Slayer mode, she raced into the dark hall. A thundering of heavy footsteps brought her attention to the stairs just in time to see a blast of Dawn's pink sweater burst past her. She didn't hear his footsteps but she saw the swoop of black that jumped over the banister and she cut off his momentum, tackling him to the ground with force. (Here is where I start paying, I guess.) She stood over the heap that now passed for Spike and eyed him with the stare that belied her internal quivering. 

"Buffy? ... Buffy, what are you doing?" Dawn stomped back into the hall and looked down at Spike. 

"Dawn, what's going on?" (Please, somebody tell me. I can't - I don't -) 

"He was helping me. You know, with my drama project. I thought it'd be cool if I could do this sort of horror and film it from the point of view of the attacker. And me being me, I did what I do best and bullied him into it." 

"What?" It was then that she saw the camcorder he was holding. "Oh... I see. I - I'm s..." She took a step back and gave him room to stand. Unable to look at him, she was grateful for the lack of light. 

"Jeez, Buffy." Dawn took the camcorder off Spike with a grin and wandered off. "I have to go check this out. Thanks, Skipper." She flicked the light-switch back up before starting off upstairs. 

"No problem, pet." 

And she was gone, leaving them alone. Buffy stared after Dawn for a few more seconds than necessary before facing the music. She winced as their eyes met. 

"Do you hate me?" 

"Of course I do. You know, you being my mortal enemy and the bane of my existence and all." His face was as deadpan as his delivery but his eyes were smiling and she knew she was safe. Maybe in more ways that one. "That's the thing about trust you see. It doesn't come for granted, you have to earn it." 

She stared at him in unconcealed amazement. "Where did you get so...? How can you be so...?" With a conceding shake of the head, she stepped into him, sighing as she came to rest against him. "I don't get you." 

"No, me neither." He hesitated momentarily before his arms closed around her, enfolding her with his scent. 

--> 


	5. Today of All Days

**PART ONE**   
CHAPTER FIVE: 

"So, what are you going to do today, Mr. Sunshine?" She hooked her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans and pulled him with her as she stepped back towards the door. 

He grimaced and allowed himself to be impelled forward. "Umm... you know smoke a kipper, light a pipe and sit in me slippers contemplating the meaning of life or unlife as the case may be." 

"OK, so basically nothing?" Her back hit against the door and she stalled in momentum, quivering in anticipation as he continued to advance, closing the space between them and leaning into her. 

"There's always 'Passions'." 

"Not on your own, there's not... unless you're planning on getting to know your hand a lot better." She reached for a hand and interlaced fingers with him. "Though these are good hands to know." 

A strange smile pulled at the corners of his mouth as he reached out with his free hand to smooth a strand of hair to the side of her face. "I _was_ talking about the TV show, Love. But if you'd prefer me to leave you with more... interesting imagery." 

"My Mom liked that show." 

"Then your Mum had good taste... which is more than I can say for you." He needled her with a quiet chuckle and a half-hearted attempt at tickling her ribs and she smiled grateful for the joke. 

Grateful for him. 

Their eyes met and suddenly she was only aware of blue. That particular brilliant, sapphire blue that was uniquely and essentially him. Blue all around her, streaming over her skin, raining through her soul and pouring itself into her womb. She sighed and closed her eyes against the demanding pulse of her core. "I _really_ have to go. I have an appointment with a prairie dog." 

"Uh-huh" 

"See you soon." She said but it came out as more of a question. 

"Of course." 

She liked the sound of that. So... certain. She kissed him quickly and made her exit before she could be drawn deeper. 

* * *

She crossed the threshold and closed the door with a beleaguered sigh. 

Home. 

Closing her eyes against the raging of her racing thoughts her thoughts turned to him. Instinctively she sought him out and with a few steps forward he came into view. 

There. On that dreaded sofa, he sat. Feet up on the coffee table, head back against the back of the sofa. Asleep. Not dead. Undead. She had to keep reminding herself for it was easy to forget. Easy to imagine there was a heartbeat drumming underneath her head when she lay against his chest. But there was none. Nothing. Nothing in there. 

But him. 

Whoever that was. 

Slipping out of her coat, she went to turn off the television and glanced back at him in the newly instigated silence. She allowed her feet to carry herself to him and felt him stir awake as she straddled his lap and collapsed against his chest. 

Home. 

"Hello, Love." 

There was no heartbeat but something low in the vacuum of his chest rumbled with every word he spoke and vibrated through her. She smiled. She couldn't help herself. She nestled her head into the nook of his neck and made an indistinct sound of greeting. 

"How'd it go?" 

The words sent a jolt through her and she sat up, back like a rod. "Cryptic... I don't want to talk about it." 

"It can't be that bad... Can it?" 

His still heavy-lidded eyes were pouring with concern and it was more than she could bare. And yet she couldn't look away. Bringing her hands up to his head she ran her fingers through his tousled hair, loosening the curls from the remainder of the gel, or whatever he used to slick it back. 

"It was just..." She drifted off, all energy for speech deserting her and so she kissed him. Lazily, languidly and he didn't hurry the pace. But it had the desired effect. A breath of rejuvenation coursed through her and awakened each and every cell in turn. Tuning her body into him. She shifted in his lap, pushing her hips against his and smiled into their deepening kisses as she felt him respond. His hands were on her arms, squeezing gently and then with more pressure as he drew her torso against his only to stop with a start and release her. 

Their lips parted and even without opening her eyes she knew what she had done. She opened her eyes and her sight confirmed what her other senses had been telling her. She stared down at the stake she had pressed against his chest. Right in the centre of the still remaining nail-polish target. Her knuckles white with the intensity of her grip. 

He began what was supposed to be a deep breath but was cut off as the pressure of the pointed weapon pressed into his skin. "Fair enough. But what a way to go." 

Her brow knitted as her gaze lifted back to his eyes. Big mistake. She was so easily lost in those eyes. Or was it found? "My spirit guide told me that Death is my Gift." 

He said nothing for a long time, made not one move for an infinite moment. His hand slowly moved up to her face and she didn't flinch as he painted his fingertips down the centre of her face. She closed her eyes as he moved over her eyelids and let out a long breath as his fingers lingered on her lips. "It's more than that. It's your Art. It's what you are... but not who you are." 

She knew as his fingers moved to caress her cheeks that they would be wet and she watched his face as he traced the tracks of her tears and bought his fingers to his mouth to taste them. Just as he did she licked her lips and tasted the salt for herself. 

"And look at you now. All in Slayer-mode." The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, a strange glint in his eyes. "I know, it makes sense. Vampire" He pointed at himself and then her. "Vampire Slayer." His eyes dropped for a moment. "Stake... and heart." His hand came against her own heart and she became aware of just how vigorously it was thumping in her chest. Her pulse thudding an erratic Morse code through her chest and into his hand. 

She dropped the stake. "Kill me." She sighed, leaning forward and pressing her forehead against his. Her now empty hands coming up to cup each side of his face. 

"What?" 

"Poetic metaphor... You know, you being the expert and all." She felt his facial muscles re-arrange themselves into a grin and smiled herself. She couldn't help herself. And she didn't want to. 

Their mouths met again in blind instinct and she settled into him once more. The tensions of the day abated from her body and melted into the ether around them only for her to remember where she was. "Not here." She gasped out desperately, her body setting taut as he impelled her back to lie on the sofa. 

"Yes. Here." His mouth moved to her neck and she shuddered despite her panic. 

"But -" 

"I know. Bad memories." He stopped and lifted his head to look at her, all seriousness and understanding. "You need to make some good memories to attach to this place... balance things out a bit. Or else it's always going to plague you." 

"I -" 

"I know." 

And he did, somehow he always did.

---> 


	6. I Would Go Out Tonight...

Another part and a bit of a long-due conversation/confrontation. I realise that the title for the story doesn't really fit anymore but never mind.  
Thanks for the reviews :-)  
  
CHAPTER SIX:  
  
"Buffy...?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Can - can I go to the cinema later?"  
  
She paused, the upturned glass she was drying wavering slightly. "What? When? Who with?"  
  
"My friends are going after school."  
  
Her sister's face reassembled itself into the age-old combination of puppy-dog eyes and pleadingly nervous grin that had won over many a parent and guardian. Her Mom would have fallen for it, no question. But things were different now. She had extra responsibilities where Dawn was concerned.  
  
"Please, Buffy, I really need to go, everybody's going to be talking about it tomorrow and if I don't go I'll be all spare-party."   
  
"I - I don't know, Dawn -"  
  
"Oh. Come on, over-protective much?" Dawn rolled her eyes and walked her empty cereal bowl over to the sink. "Glory doesn't know who I am and the more I carry on as normal, the less she's going to suspect. Oh go on, what's the worst that could happen?"  
  
"In Sunnydale? On the *Hellmouth*? Try death, disaster and apocalypse."  
  
"Yeah... but if Glory was really *that* desperate you'd know it from the line of dead bodies leading up to your door."  
  
Buffy cringed, sometimes Dawn came out with the grossest stuff and she would have to remind herself that she wasn't dealing with a demon here, but a teenager. Not that there was much difference, especially in this town.  
  
"OK, OK, you win. Straight after school, whatever you do stay close to your friends and home before eight."  
  
"Eight?!"  
  
"Yes, eight... or eight-thirty at the latest." She brandished the tea towel at her sister in a mock-threatening manner. "You hear me?"  
  
Her sister made a salute. "Eight-thirty it is... thanks Buffy." Dawn grabbed her coat and lunch off the sideboard and bounded out of the kitchen.  
  
"Do you need some money?" Buffy called after her.  
  
"No, it's OK. Spike gave me some when I caught him smoking in the bathroom. Bye, Buffy."   
  
The door slammed to and left Buffy with only her revived confusion for company. (Spike. Giving my sister money to shut her up. Bribing my sister?) She didn't know whether she should be shocked or not but the weirdest thing about it was that she wasn't and she should be angry but she wasn't. She put the last dried cup back in the cupboard and slowly moved upstairs.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
Each step was weighted but not with something that felt like dread but it wasn't. The niggling in her stomach wasn't fear but excitement and she wanted to drag it out because the sight she would get when she opened her bedroom door was worth the wait. Worth the expense of eternities.  
  
She crept in her darkened cocoon of a bedroom and with a small smile she crawled into bed next to him and snuggled against his back.  
  
"Mfph." He rolled over, wrapped his arm around her and breathed her in. "Mpfhon"  
  
"What?"  
  
He opened his sleep-glazed eyes and smiled lazily at her. "I said 'Morning'."  
  
"Well, in that case, Mimphig roff."  
  
He chuckled and moved on top of her. His head pillowed on her breasts and his lower torso settled between her legs. "Melphing urgp." The now familiar rumbling of his chest sent the gurgling messages vibrating through her abdomen and along her groin. She sighed at the sensation knowing only that she had to keep this up.  
  
"Rypfer argerumpf arfed."  
  
He lifted his head. "Derfig?"  
  
She nodded they both laughed, their bodies rocking together. She felt him shuffle his lower body and knew why but he did nothing about it.  
  
"Arghog, Love."  
  
"I think it's about time you started calling me by my name, don't you?"  
  
He frowned at her, his eyes flitting between her eyes and her lips to see if she had actually said the words.  
  
"Bu -" He paused and locked eyes with her. Steely-shivers shot down her spine to pulse at her core at the wide-open intensity of his gaze. She nodded slightly and he continued. "Buffy... Buffy." He grinned and kissed her softly once, twice, thrice, mouthing her name between kisses and it was all too much. They could both feel it for when she clutched at his shoulders to pull him up and into her, he was already on his way.   
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"What ya doing?" She squinted to make him out in the failing light of sunset.  
  
"Going out." He didn't look up until he'd done his belt buckle.  
  
His words and tone of voice struck something inside of her (Panic?) and she sat up with an unnatural straightness and tension in her spine. "What? Where?"  
  
"I don't know, for a walk, wherever my feet take me." He smiled thinly at her, the corners of his mouth barely lifting. "I'm getting cabin fever stuck in here."  
  
"What - What are you? -"  
  
"You only just thinking about that? Wondered how long it'd take."  
  
"For what?" She could feel her heartbeat pounding through her and she knew he must be able to hear it. She felt exposed in a way that went far beyond nudity and clutched the bed sheets under her chin.  
  
"For you to wake up and smell the monster."  
  
She flinched at the bite in his voice and closed her eyes. (Haven't I been here before?) "Why are you being suddenly being so -"  
  
"Honest?"  
  
"Confrontational."  
  
She stared at him, searching for cues, some clue from his body language but his stance was solid and unyielding, even his eyes were void of the tenderness she had grown used to. Too used to. She bit her lower lip and for a moment he was distracted by it. But not long enough.  
  
"I think it's about time we faced this, don't you?"  
  
"Faced what? I don't know why we can't just go on -"  
  
"As we are? It's not real until we face the facts here."  
  
"You think I don't know what you are? *Hello* to the times you've tried to kill me and my friends." Her gestures became more and more exaggerated as her desperation grew. "I held a stake to your heart yesterday, you think I don't realise you're a Vampire? You've done nothing but remind me of that *fact* since I met you again."  
  
"Yes, I have to keep reminding you because you're in this little 'let's-pretend' cocoon of a world where you may know what I am but you force yourself not to think about it too much." He took a deep breath and a step forward, rethought it and reverted to his original spot.   
  
She said nothing, she knew he would continue speaking, he had some sort of script and if she left him to it, he'd get to the line that punched her in the gut. She reached for her bathrobe and swung round to sit on the edge of the bed as she put it on. She couldn't look at him.  
  
"Only if yesterday told us anything, it said that there's this niggling doubt in your mind that one day you may have to kill me. Only you probably don't want to do that 'cos you kinda like having me around like some sort of teddy bear sex-pet..." He couldn't suppress a smirk. "Whilst I'm *really* not complaining about that, you need to remember that not only does this teddy bear have fangs... he has very sharp, well used fangs. That's why you don't want me to go out. Afraid I may take a nibble from the all-you-can-eat buffet."  
  
She glared at him, feeling something rise in her. Anger, frustration. Maybe he didn't understand after all. Sod his script.  
  
"You're wrong."  
  
"W-What?"  
  
She forced herself to stand up and face him. "You're wrong. I'm not scared of what you are. I *know* you're a Vampire and I know what that means. But I also know what it means to be the Slayer and if you so much as dribble on one of my townies I will stake you in an instant."   
  
The harshness of her voice unnerved her and patently surprised him but it had the desired effect of shutting him up and so she continued. "Don't think it makes a difference that you got in my bed, I've killed my lover before, I can do it again."  
  
She took a deep breath and released the tension in her crossed arms, letting them fall to her sides. Her tone softened and she stepped closer, keeping his eye contact as she did.  
  
"I know what you are," She paused, recalling their sofa conversation yesterday and couldn't help her lips curling slightly. "But I don't know who you are. *That's* what scares me, not that you're going out but that you're not gonna come back."  
  
Her gaze dropped from his. "I'm scared that if you do come back, what does it mean, what do we mean? I don't the answers to any of the questions that surround us and they're not the Slayer-Vampire type question, they're the male-female, man-woman questions that never go away."  
  
She thought she saw him smile before his head dipped shyly to the floor. She smiled at the gesture and glanced around the room to refocus herself.  
  
"You walking out that door *would* be a test. But I don't know what constitutes a pass or a failure and I don't even know if I want you to succeed or not. I -"  
  
She was cut off by his lips and she didn't fight it. Instead she relaxed against him, dissolved into him and for the briefest moment became him.  
  
"I think I'll stay in for tonight." He panted against her cheek after they parted. "We've got some making-up to do."  
  
"Was that an argument?"  
  
He chuckled and walked her backwards to the bed. "No, I'm sure death-threats are the Slayer version of sweet-nothings."  
  
"You'd be surprised."  
  
"Yeah, you keep on surprising me."  
  
"Ditto." 


	7. I Have to Go Out Tonight.

This part follows on about an hour after the last chapter, so I guess you could say it's a bit of a two-parter.  
I've left it in a horrid place, I know, but it ain't over yet.  
Thanks for the reviews. You lovely people, you.   
  
CHAPTER SEVEN:  
  
She writhed in her bed. Her free hand grasping at the bed sheets with a desperate white-knuckled fist. The cotton groaned under her grip. "Umm... What?"  
  
"Buffy, are you alright? Are you listening to me?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm listening, Will. And I'm fine..." She looked down at the white-blonde head working between her legs and the corners of her mouth tugged upwards. "*Really* I am."  
  
"We just haven't seen you around much, is all... Is everything OK?"  
  
She glanced at the head again and it turned up to look back at her with a face of someone drunk on passionate mischief. He grinned at her before dipping his head back and continuing. She gasped at the renewed sensations. "Things are *very* OK."  
  
"Uh, OK. I was just worried. It's understandable, I know but it just seems that lately you don't know whether you're coming or going -"  
  
"I'm fine, Will, really. I'll see you tonight, OK?" She managed to get out through clenched teeth. The cotton of the bed sheets finally gave way with a satisfyingly sharp tear that sympathised with the tension bubbling inside of her.  
  
"At Xander's?"  
  
"Yeah sure. See you later, Will. Bye."  
  
She slammed the receiver down on its hook and grasped at his curls with both hands, her head and body arching off the bed and her thighs clamping around his head as a storm of pleasure wreaked through her. Her muscles twitched out the aftershocks as she fell back against the pillow and relaxed into a sublime calm that settled itself in her belly and rippled outwards. She tugged weakly at his hair to invite him up.  
  
He responded, lazily crawling up her body in the strong-shouldered-slack-backed manner of a predator. Her stomach leaped and she felt desire tweak along her groin again. She smiled as he drew his head up level with hers and they locked eyes.  
  
"You off out tonight?"  
  
She nodded. "I have to... I haven't seen my friends for days. They'll start to suspect something."  
  
He chuckled and dipped his head to kiss her collarbone. "They'd never suspect this, Love... Not in a millennia of Sundays."  
  
"I know. But I should do the 'quality time' thing... Giles said he'd let me get back to training in my own time but I should check in with him too." She glanced at the clock - 7:30 - and back at him with big, hopeful eyes. "You stay for when Dawn gets home?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
One word. One syllable. That's all. Yet she couldn't rationalise how much of an effect it had on her. She stared up at him until he was forced to ask:  
  
"What?"  
  
She shook her head (Nothing. Everything.) and drew him down for a kiss.  
  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Hey Buff! Where's the Dawnster?" Xander asked, scanning the hall as he let her in.  
  
"Out, with friends. I, um, asked a neighbour to be in when she gets back."  
  
"Neighbour?"  
  
"Mrs. Randall, next door. She's been really nice, you know, since Mom." Not exactly a lie, Mrs. Randall had been nice since the funeral in that over-enthusiastic-I-don't-mean-to-get-in-your-way-but-if-there's-anything-I-can-do... way.  
  
Xander nodded in that silent, supportive way he did and it reminded her how much she loved him and Willow.  
  
"I left a note for her to call me when she gets in."  
  
Anya was coming towards her now and she steeled herself for the uninfectious enthusiasm Anya in hostess mode.  
  
"Hello, Buffy. Let me take your coat. We have pegs now, look." She pointed out the coat pegs on the wall by the door and her eyes went misty. "Xander got his tool out and put them up yesterday." She said proudly and obliviously.  
  
"Wow, they're... great pegs." Buffy smiled at Xander as she handed her coat to Anya.  
  
"My Xander is really good with his hands. Aren't you baby?" She rubbed Xander's arm and he would have been embarrassed if he wasn't far too used to it by now.  
  
"Willow and Tara have just gone out for munchies and a video." Xander said as they walked over to the lounge part of his apartment. "I told them no chick-flicks, it's bad enough I've got to entertain all you women without having to put up with all that sappy, romantic stuff."  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes and Anya took him far too literally.  
  
"Poor baby. That's why I suggested Willow and Tara go. With them being... as they are, they'll probably pick something my Xander can enjoy too - only vicariously though, of course." Anya smiled. "I'll give him the real thing tonight."  
  
"Anya!" OK, that earned a blush.  
  
Buffy laughed. Maybe tonight wouldn't be so bad after all. She realised that she'd missed them all, even Anya. By the sounds of it both she and Xander had something to look forward to when they were alone with their partners (is that the right thing to call him?) tonight.  
  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Hey, Buffy. I just got your note."  
  
Buffy glanced over at the equally relieved faces of her friends and at the clock - 8:20 - good her sister listened to her. She couldn't help the swarm of pride that warmed her. She had laid down a curfew and it had been adhered to. She was officially a guardian.  
  
"So, did you have a good time?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. The movie was great. That Freddie Prinze Junior is just divine, don't you think?"  
  
"Umm, he's OK, I suppose. Did you go anywhere after?"  
  
"Just for milkshakes, junk-food and over-analysis."  
  
"Sounds good. I'm glad you had a good time. Can I speak to Sp - you-know-who a minute?"  
  
"You-know-who? Oh, he's not here."  
  
"What?!" Her heart stopped and lunged towards her throat.  
  
"Er, I thought he was with you - But now I'm realising that's just a ridiculous idea. But no, he's not here. I kinda thought it was cool you trusted me to be on my own - But now I'm realising that that's a ridiculous idea too." There was a moment or eternity of silence over the line. "Er, Buffy?"  
  
She felt sick, her head was turning over so fast she was getting dizzy from standing still. "Dawn. Stay inside, I'm coming home." She hung up and turned to her friends. They had gone back to watching the movie.  
  
"I have to go."  
  
"Buffy, what's wrong?" Willow asked, her body language indicating that she was about to stand up and come towards her. Buffy had to think fast, there was no way she could lie to Willow if she was stood right in front of her.  
  
"Mrs. Randall." She voiced the first thought that came to mind. "Yes! Mrs. Randall, she's not too well so I'd better get back and relieve her of Dawn duty."  
  
"Are you sure you're OK?"  
  
"D-do you want us to come with you?" Tara spoke, backing up Willow.  
  
Buffy forced a casual laugh that came out more as a scoff. "Yeah, fine. Sorry about tonight guys, I did enjoy myself for all of about twenty minutes."  
  
"Don't worry about it. We'll try for half-an-hour next time." Xander grinned and she smiled gratefully back at him.  
  
"Sure."  
  
-  
-  
-  
  
"He's gone." Dawn declared after having searched the house for any sign of him but there was nothing.  
  
The house remained as if he had never been here, as if the last few days had never happened. It had never felt so empty, well, except after the funeral. Even her memories were threatening to fade fast. She wondered vaguely if Home was indeed where the Heart is, then by inviting him into her home had she -?  
  
She dug her fingers into the kitchen counter until her fingernails paled and pained against the pressure.  
  
"Aren't you even a little worried?"  
  
She glanced around at her sister stood in the doorway. "No." She stated numbly. "He's gone. People leave... it happens."  
  
"He left his car." Dawn stated matter-of-factly, crossing her arms and leaning against the doorjamb.  
  
Buffy thought back. Him. The rain. The car. She in his coat. '"Something's should be left behind."' 


	8. A Day to Get Back to You - 1

Okay, bit of a long chappy for you. I started with an initial idea and got carried away writing the Dawn part. What can I say, this thing is taking on a life of it's own.  
Thanks immensely for the reviews; they're very inspiring. It's nice to see some of the same name's pop up again and again.  
Hope you like. :-)  
  
CHAPTER EIGHT:  
  
It was strange how used she had grown so used to him in such a short time. The bed felt cold and empty when she woke up, the kitchen large and yet claustrophobic. The lounge had regained its previous ominous overtones but at least she could sit on the sofa now without being overcome with nausea.   
  
He had given her all these memories, only to leave her with only them for company. (Oh and a clapped-out, old rust bucket with suspiciously blacked-out windows. What must the neighbours think?)   
  
The aching void that he had eased pulled again in her gut and she recognised the pain all to well. She realised that she was grieving for him. (Is this his new way of trying to kill me? Got bored with fist and fangs and decided to try it this way instead? And then got bored with that?)  
  
She stared at the square tiles of letters in front of her and her mind rearranged them into nonsensical words. TKERGAS, SKERTGA, AGE TRSK, STA TREK?  
  
"I can't go."  
  
Dawn looked up at her and frowned. "Are you sure? You said that last time."  
  
She stared down at the web of words, her eyes focusing through the board, through the table, through the floor looking for some hidden meaning in it all. She broke away and turned her head back at her sister. "I can't go."  
  
"It was your idea to play Scrabble, Buffy. You could at least put some effort into it. I mean what kind of a word is 'FAR'?"  
  
"It's in the dictionary."  
  
"Yeah... but if you're going to let me win you can at least be subtle about it."  
  
Buffy sighed and sank back into the sofa. "I'm sorry, I just thought we could do something. Just the two of us, you know?"  
  
"Yeah but *Scrabble*?" Dawn executed the perfect I-so-bored-with-this look N° 3 and even pouted a little.  
  
"We used to play it, with Mom."  
  
Her sister nodded and her eyes lowered to her own letters.  
  
"Dawn?" She waited until Dawn met her eyes. "Do you think that I've been... neglecting you lately. You know since -?"  
  
"Since you've been getting some?"  
  
Buffy cringed. (What is it with Dawn and her mouth lately? Has she been spending too much time with Anya?)  
  
"If you have to put it like that then, yeah. I mean, have you... you know, been feeling the neglect-age?"  
  
Dawn shrugged. "Not really. Maybe you were a bit busy and in your room making a lot of suspect noises." She smiled at Buffy's blushes. "But when you were around you were... better."  
  
"Better?"  
  
"Yeah, you know... happier." Dawn's voice wilted and she continued in an only-just-audible whisper. "It was like for a while we were a family again and not just two... orphans."   
  
"We're not orphans, Dawn."  
  
That earned a bitter scoff. "That's right, we've got a Dad... somewhere."  
  
"Do you want to call him?"  
  
"Dad?! No!" She sighed and scrunched up her glassy eyes. "He doesn't care. I couldn't stand talking to someone that doesn't care right now."  
  
"I know." They looked at each other in full understanding, The empathy passing between them in a heart wrenching moment of silent eye contact.  
  
"I didn't want him to go away, if that's what you're thinking."  
  
"No?"  
  
"No, I mean he was alright for a bloodsucker with a bad bleach job."  
  
Buffy laughed. "You didn't like the hair?"  
  
Dawn's eyes wide with incredulity. "I suppose he's got that whole 'no reflection' excuse going for him. I mean if he ever saw just how ridiculous he looked, he'd probably never go out the house - Oh, er, I mean..."   
  
Buffy let it pass with a wave of her hand. "The hair, it kinda grows on you."  
  
"You mean *he* kinda grows on you."  
  
Buffy gaped back at Dawn. Sometimes she would come out with something that would make Buffy question just who or what she was talking to. She looked into her sister's old-as-time eyes and wondered if the aged nature of The Key had endowed her with some innate wisdom that was totally at odds with the self-centred, easily-bored nature of the teenager she was. Something so old and young in the same annoying-little-sister package. You didn't get any more special than that.  
  
"Yeah... I guess he does - did. But no more."  
  
"Nevermore?"  
  
"Never... 'Never' is a strong word -"  
  
"There's always hope, right?"  
  
Something in her sister's voice made her pause and question herself. Eventually she nodded. Somehow, unlike Riley, he had left her with something. Something she could now put a name to.   
  
"Yeah, there's always hope."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"You think we should call a tow truck?" Dawn asked as they assessed the Desoto in the stark midday light.  
  
"No. I'm not paying to have this thing shifted. Maybe if we leave it long enough it'll decompose. That or the aesthetically obsessed neighbours will have it removed." The sisters grinned at the shared image of Mrs. Randall hyper-ventilating about the state of the neighbourhood while staring pointedly at them.   
  
A thought struck Buffy as they walked up to the car. "Or maybe we can fix it up." She ran a hand along the hood and up the paint-caked front window.  
  
"You just don't want to let go."  
  
No, it was proof. Proof he'd been here. Buffy smiled thinly at her sister. "Just leave it a couple of days?"  
  
"Whatever... it's your call. Though you may wanna have it moved. You know in case Giles or anyone comes round. Won't they recognise it?"  
  
She hadn't thought of that. She hadn't thought of much at all, except...   
  
Sure her friends would recognise it. It was pretty much unmistakable. Just like him.   
  
She tried the door - open. The keys were even still in the ignition. (Guess no one's gonna steal a dead engine. Guess no one would want *this* dead engine. Except me... maybe.)  
  
She felt herself drawn in and sat down in the driver's seat. His scent engulfed her as it had done that first night and her mouth twitched into a smile as memories flooded into her. The car was more than just like him. It *was* him. Maybe she could keep it somewhere secluded. A place to go when it all got too much, a haven that smelt of all things him. (OK, don't get too much with the sappiness now, will you, Buff?)   
  
Instinctively reaching for the keys she turned the engine over. It chugged and complained like she expected it to but then sprung to life with a startling grunt that made her jump. As the engine mellowed out into a steady growl she stared up at Dawn.  
  
"I thought you said his thing wouldn't start?"  
  
"I - It wouldn't." (OK, I didn't actually hear it not starting.)  
  
"Miracle?"  
  
"I don't think so. Unless it's just... temperamental." (Or has the worst/best timing ever.)  
  
Dawn laughed and Buffy frowned at her. "What?"  
  
"I know his game. He played the "my car won't start" trick, eh? A classic - well it is in the movies."  
  
"Trick?" She found herself considering the word more than she would have liked. Had it all been a trick? Just when did it start? If the car was still running then why did he leave it behind? Or was this just his calling card? A shot of indefinable thought bolted through as she turned the engine off. Something was wrong here. Very wrong.  
  
She turned in her seat to look into the back seat. Nothing, just a few empty bottles of whiskey and cigarette butts.   
  
"What you looking for." She heard Dawn ask. She couldn't say. She didn't know what she was looking for exactly but she knew what finding it would mean.   
  
Hope.  
  
Searching at the sides and under the seats turned up nothing but more of the same and a couple of old newspapers. 1977, 1992, 1981 (The year I was born. Huh.) Just on the point of giving up she had one more instinct to follow. Her eyes settled on the glove compartment and her hands were instantly on the latch, opening it.  
  
There. That was it. Exactly. She tentatively pulled it out of it's confine and stared at it.  
  
One of Drusilla's dolls.  
  
There were some things that should be left behind. That could be left behind. But was this one of them? Even if this was all about hurting her, he still loved Drusilla. He would need this just as much as she needed things to remind her of her mother. Maybe he had wanted a really, really fresh start and wanted to leave it all behind him. Or maybe... just maybe, he hadn't left at all.  
  
"Dawn!"  
  
"What? What did you find?"  
  
"Everything." She put the doll back in the glove compartment and got out the car, securing it habitually. "Come on, we're going to the Magic Shop."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"So, you've heard nothing? No rise in Vampiric activity or any new... strangeness?"  
  
"No, nothing. Apart from the odd crazed leftover from Glory's brain food found wandering around, things have been rather quiet. Disturbingly so... I-I-It's as if something is building. Some - something terrible is waiting to happen -"  
  
"This is Sunnydale, Giles. Something terrible is *always* waiting to happen. Something terrible is usually in the *process* of happening. As it is, I'm happy for the time off."  
  
Giles seemed rightly taken aback by her outburst and predictably removed his glasses for inspection. Thankfully he refrained from cleaning them. She realised that it just gave him something else to focus on, a reason no to look her in the eye.   
  
"That's understandable Buffy, after what you're going through but I really think that you should get back to your training. You don't want to be out of condition when the next -" He paused for a weighted, dramatic breath and met her eye once more. She wasn't going to like this "You need to understand that you - Glory is a very powerful opponent, a god no less -"  
  
"Yes! I get it. A Hell god. "Feel my fury, for you shall bow down before me" and all that. I *get* it, Giles, I've fought her before. Remember?" It was her turn to take a heavy breath. "But when the time comes - no matter how hard I train - I'm not gonna be able to defeat her through strength alone." She sat down and sighed, rubbing at her temples with her fingers.  
  
"So you're just going to... give up?"  
  
She glanced at Giles and her gaze drifted to rest on her sister, sat quietly, awkwardly twiddling her thumbs amidst the tension. She smiled at her.   
  
"No. Never." Dawn grinned at that and Buffy had never felt so proud.  
  
The bell tinkled and the sound of laughter dissolved the tension. She glanced up to see Xander, Anya and Willow enter the shop.  
  
"Anya Jenkins, shop-assistant extraordinairre reporting for duty." Anya stopped just short of a salute as she approached Giles. "Well boss, where are the customers?"  
  
"Anya." Giles was breathless already. "It's been a quiet morning. Why don't you start the stock taking?"  
  
"Oh, OK. Bye honey." She pecked Xander on the cheek before disappearing down into the cellar.  
  
"Hey Giles, Buffy." Xander made a special smile for Dawn. "How's my favourite Dawny?"  
  
Dawn rolled her eyes. "I'm not twelve any more, *Xandy*. In fact, I never was." At that she stood up and went to look around the shop.  
  
"Don't worry, Xandy. I still love you." Willow smiled as she sat down next to a suddenly quite disconcerted Xander. She looked quietly serene in the manner that only the seriously content and loved-up can carry off and for more than a moment Buffy envied her. "How you doing, Buffy?"  
  
"Unsettled. I think there's something going on." She glanced quickly at Giles to see him nod wearily.  
  
"Once again, the theme-tune of the Hellmouth." Xander quipped, stretching out a casual yawn. "And here I thought we could have a nice hang-out-y Saturday with no hell beasties getting in the way. Should have known... So, what's the 411?"  
  
She stopped. She couldn't tell them. They'd find out eventually and she'd face them when they did but not now. She wasn't ready. "Er, guys. I really think I should handle this on my own -"  
  
A burst of activity coming forth from the door interrupted her. She turned in alarm to see two of Glory's scabby minions advancing upon them. Her eyes shot to Dawn and she silently urged her sister to hide behind the counter she was standing at. Satisfied that Dawn was hidden she stood to face-off with the minions.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"If you please. It is not a matter of what we want but what our Mistress, the most incandescent and radiant One most deeply desires that is our business -"  
  
"Because what She desires is what we desire. Her most humble and loyal servants that we are."  
  
"Indeed, for serving her -"  
  
"I'm losing my patience rather quickly here and you don't want to see me in my most out-of-patience state." (OK, not my best threat) But it had the required effect. The minions stopped expounding amongst the two of them and even cowered a little.  
  
"Right. Straight out with it..." The male minion began before taking a step back and giving the female the stage. (Typical male)  
  
"Quite. Glory has your pet Vampire and if you do not relinquish The Key to her she will kill him."  
  
"Her what?" Xander and Willow questioned loudly together and Buffy's heart stopped.  
  
"Glory would normally do away with such a creature on sight but you do seem quite... attached to this particular specimen - and may I just say, I can see why - and Glory with Her infinite intelligence realises the bargaining power he possesses." The minion smiled smugly and pressed her palms together. "The trade is simple: The Vampire for The Key."  
  
"The what? What the hell's she talking about, Buffy?" Xander.  
  
"Yeah, Buffy. What's this all about?" Willow.  
  
"Buffy. This has gone far enough. I demand to know what is going on here." Giles.  
  
Buffy turned to the questioning gaze of her friends and Watcher.  
  
"Er, guys." She winced. "I think there's something you should know." 


	9. A Day to Get Back to You - 2

You can take this from about 10 or 20 minutes after the last part ended, I suppose. The minions have departed and Buffy has delivered the news...  
Thanks, ever so for the reviews, make my day they do :-)  
  
CHAPTER NINE:  
  
"Spike."  
  
"Yes. Xander, for the fifth time: It's Spike." She sighed and brought her fingers to pinch at the nagging strain in the bridge of her nose.  
  
"Spike?"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"*Spike* Spike?" Xander continued with his emphatic gestures, waving his hands about in an attempt to communicate just how much trouble he was having coming to terms with this new information.  
  
"Xander, please, just try -"  
  
"The Spike that tried to murder us all, Spike?"  
  
"N-not all of us."  
  
"He hasn't tried to kill me." Anya said nonchalantly, not taking her eyes off the receipts she was studying all too closely.   
  
"Or me." Dawn piped up, giving her sister a small, supportive smile.  
  
"OK, not all, just the ones of us lucky enough to have met him *before* he got in Buffy's pants."  
  
"Xander!" Willow's voice and expression betrayed only a little confusion shaped, as they were, out of pure best-friend-type concern.  
  
"I suppose if we're being pedantic here, he hasn't made a specific effort to kill me either." Giles sighed heavily and loosened his tie.  
  
"OK, the Spike that's made a 'specific effort' to kill Buffy, me and Willow. Is that better?"  
  
"Well a-actually -"  
  
"Willow!"  
  
"Shut up, all of you." Giles finally lost his patience with the situation. He stood up and began to pace, his shoulders tense and his head dipped down ever so slightly, as he rubbed at his eyes.  
  
"We're getting nowhere here. Losing sight of what's important." Once he was sure that he had everyone's attention, he continued." The fact is, Glory has Spike and we need to know if there's a danger... I-if he has told Glory a-about Dawn."  
  
"He can't have. He doesn't know - there's no way he can do." Buffy scanned the not-entirely-convinced faces of her friends. "I didn't tell him... I-I wasn't thinking that far ahead."  
  
"It seems to me like you weren't thinking much at all"  
  
She ignored Xander, silently imploring Willow and Giles to react with reason. "I can't let him die over this. I can't let him die over something he has no clue about. He's innocent in this."  
  
"He's not innocent. He's never innocent. He's Mr. Kill-the-innocent-and-bathe-in-their-blood! - Insert evil laugh here."  
  
"I've had this lecture already, Xander. From Spike, himself. And believe me when I say it's wearing thin."  
  
"Wait, Spike lectured you on his qualification in evilness?" Willow asked.  
  
"He tried to, yes."  
  
"*OK*, this just keeps on getting wiggier. Have we slipped into the Twilight Zone, here?" It seemed odd to her. Xander making his usual flip comments but his voice was flat, humourless, and it made Buffy cringe internally far more than any of his earlier, edgier comments had.   
  
"Anya, have you or any of your vengeance demon friends been granting strange wishes? Because I *really* not liking the idea of meeting the evil me again." Willow laughed coyly and Buffy couldn't help smiling fondly at her attempt to diffuse the tension, before remembering the reason for the tension.  
  
"Look guys. I remember the times he tried to kill us, I really do." She looked down as she relived the past few days in her mind's eye. "But I also remember how he's had plenty of chances to kill me but he hasn't... and how he's been there for me -"  
  
"Been there for you? *We're* your friends, we're *here* for you."  
  
Xander's eyes had hardened and his arms crossed over his chest. The Xander she knew and loved was nowhere to be seen in this stranger's countenance. But no - she had met this Xander before, when he had been the voice of harsh morality over Angel. She grimaced at the memories. Just how did they get here again? Was her life destined to come back to the same point, to the same confrontation?   
  
"He understands in a way none of you can... Drusilla, was killed - by Angel." She looked up as the shock registered on her friend's faces and her eyes drifted to Giles. "I know you went through it with Jenny but I needed someone else. I needed what only he could offer -"  
  
"You mean sex?"  
  
"Yes, Xander. If you insist on being so direct, the sex was a big part of it... but not all. There was more to it, we -"  
  
"Xander, would you rescue *me* if I were captured by a hell God?" Anya finally looked up from her perusing and cut through the fraught conversation with her musing.  
  
Xander sighed and looked at his girlfriend, his eyes softening as they settled on her, even though his patience was still short. "Of course I would, honey. But that's different. I love you, I'd do anything -"  
  
Silence swelled from the centre of the table and expanded to fill the room with an uncomfortable pressure as all eyes turned towards Buffy. The eternities bred and their children mocked her from the ceiling and from the top of the shelves, as she waited for the inevitable question:  
  
Willow was the first to air the same thought they all had. "Oh God, Buffy. Are you in love?"  
  
She tried to apply an expression of shock but it failed and she gave up. "I-I... don't know. But... I need him. We need each other, right now." She took a deep breath to build up her will to say what was necessary. "I don't know if this is going to last, or if it was over before it even began, but I *need* to save him. I need to see him OK."  
  
There was more silence but less accusation in the air. Again Willow was the first to speak. "Really?"  
  
Buffy nodded "Yes... I couldn't stand any more death right now."  
  
Xander sat back up straight and regarded her. She thought for a moment that he would make some remark about how, *technically*, Spike was already dead and she didn't think she'd be able to stand it. His expression remained indiscernible until he spoke. "Then what do want us to do?  
  
The relief was immense. She let out a shaky breath, releasing the knot in her gut and smiled widely at her friends. "Thanks, guys."  
  
"It's what we're here for."   
  
She gave Xander another smile before winding herself into Slayer-mode. She stood and folded her arms as she addressed her friends.   
  
"The way I look at it," her eyes settled on Dawn, "if Glory wants The Key... then we'll just have to give it to her." 


	10. A Day to Get Back to You - 3

Okay, so it's finally here - though I'm not sure you'll thank me when you've read it.  
Won't say too much about it other than: I hope you don't absolutely hate this part because there will be more... when I get round to it.  
Thanks immensely for the feedback... it's a very lovely thing...   
  
CHAPTER TEN:   
  
"All done!"  
  
Dawn emerged from the training room with a giddy bounce and a wide grin plastered on her face. Buffy looked up from her pacing. Dawn's excitement wasn't infectious enough to calm the greedy nervous energy that eating away at her gut. Her eyes settled on Tara.  
  
"Did it work?" She asked, her nerves tightening painfully with anticipation.  
  
Tara smiled and held out a small fossil to Buffy. The rock glowed green momentarily as it passed hands and then reverted to its natural grey, scaly form. Buffy stared at the rock and traced the spiral ammonite imprint with her finger, entranced by its stark yet beautiful simplicity. She'd never looked closely at anything like this before, never seen them as anything more than old rocks but now it so much more. A symbol for everything they all hoped for - an end to this nightmare. If this worked then...  
  
"Are you sure that Glory won't be able to use this?"  
  
"Like I said, it's not the *actual* essence of The Key, more like a... photocopy." Willow and Tara - like Dawn - were still buzzing from after effects of the spell and swayed against each other like two halves of a perfect jigsaw puzzle of happiness.  
  
"Yeah... But are we *sure* that it won't work just the same? It's not like... having a spare key cut?"  
  
Giles came forward and inspected the fossil. Buffy was half-surprised when it didn't glow, but she reasoned that the after-effects of the spell had abated. It was a lot more convincing as a Key if it didn't give itself away with a suspect green light whenever you went near it.   
  
"From what I've read a-and what The Council has told me -" He was momentarily lost to the hypnotic spiral until he shook himself out of his daze. "The Key... i-it has to be pure - undiluted and untainted."  
  
"You think this will be enough to fool her?" She spoke quietly, afraid to let any twinge of hope into her voice. Afraid to jinx this chance they had.  
  
Giles stared back at her and spoke just as quietly. "We can only try."  
  
That was all the encouragement she needed. "Xander - you have the address?"  
  
"Yep, them new apartments up by the park. The insano hell goddess sure does like her luxury."  
  
The adrenaline was in full flow now. Her heart thumping, her veins throbbing and her whole body buzzing with restless energy. This is what it cam down to. Every time.  
  
"Giles, Xander, Willow - you're with me. Tara - take Dawn somewhere safe and do a protection spell." She paused for thought. (Where is safe? Where does Glory not know?) The answer came, as it so often did, in the face of one of her friends. "Xander - you're apartment?"  
  
"What about it? ... Oh, yeah." He tossed the keys to Tara with a smile.  
  
"Thanks. Right... Giles - weapons. I know they're pretty useless against Glory, but I don't trust those minions as far as... Xander could throw them -"  
  
"Hey!" All eyes turned to Xander. "I know what you say is true and I recognise the emergency we have wailing here, but I still feel, on behalf of my bruised male-ego, that I'm entitled to a 'Hey!'... And now I'm done."  
  
Buffy grinned. "We still love you, Xandy."  
  
"What about me?" Anya asked from behind the counter.  
  
"Er, we love you too?"  
  
"No, and *eww*... No, I mean - what do I do while you're out putting my Xander's life in jeopardy?" She said and Buffy understood her concern. Only too well.   
  
"Well Anya," Giles began, "it is of imperative importance that you stay here and... look after the shop."  
  
"You mean, do what I always do?"  
  
"Exactly, carry on everything as normal - oh and Anya?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"As of now, consider yourself promoted."  
  
Anya grinned widely and patted the cash register enthusiastically, before her thoughts turned back to Xander and her face fell. She gravitated over to him and looped her arms around his waist.  
  
"Come back and be proud of me?" She asked, looking up at him with her chin against his chest.  
  
"Wild horses... et cetera." He smiled down at her, wrapping his arms around her and enfolding her in a squeeze of a hug.  
  
Buffy allowed them their moment and then turned to Giles.   
  
"It's time."   
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Take me to Glory."  
  
"You have the exchange?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
The minion did nothing to hide the look of self-satisfied conceit on his face. He rubbed his hands together, muttering something about how pleased Glory will be with him. The other minion who had visited the shop joined him and they whispered in conspiracy for a few moments. They glanced back at Buffy, once, twice, before indicating for the three of them to follow.  
  
Buffy did a quick sweep of the foyer - noting the stairs and looking for other escape routes. She shared a look of unity with Willow as they followed the minions into the elevator.  
  
"You lot in there. We shall meet you on the forth floor. *Don't* try anything. Glory would be most upset and when she is upset she tends to... take her frustrations out on others." They shot her a meaningful glare and scurried off towards the stairs.  
  
The doors closed and the four of them were shut in the confined space. She was so glad none of them were claustrophobic, but still she had the distinct impression that someone else was in there with them. Her eyes scanned the faces of her friends and she frowned, still sensing something else. That was when it hit, when she realised.  
  
He had been in here.  
  
She faltered and teetered on her spot as all breath left her body and her eyes fell to the floor.   
  
And then she saw it.  
  
"Giles." Once she had his attention she simply pointed. To the blood. "Spike's"  
  
"H-how do you know-"  
  
"I *know*. I just know."  
  
Xander hovered over the bloodstain. "You've got to have expected this, that you might not get him back intact... in one piece even." He lifted his head to meet Buffy's glare. "Oh, come on, this *is* Glory 'I could squash you like a bug' we're talking about here -"  
  
"Xander, you're *so* not helping." Buffy silenced him.  
  
"Yes, please do shut up." Giles said in his quietly sardonic manner. The elevator lurched slightly as it reached its destination and Giles pushed at a button to hold the doors to. "Buffy, are you ready?"  
  
She took a deep breath, checked her crossbow and nodded.  
  
"Xander, Willow?" They both nodded and Giles released the button. The doors opened to reveal the anticipatory gazes of the minions. Buffy gulped down the urge to fire the crossbow into one of their smug, ugly little faces and followed them, in silence.  
  
The minions scuttled away, taking turns to over-take each other as they hurried down the corridor, each wanting to be the first to Glory.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Blessed Glorificus, She that shines so blindingly bright with beauty. The Slayer is here to see you."  
  
"Uh-huh." When the minions moved away, they revealed Glory to be lounging self-importantly on a throne-like sofa whilst having her nails filed by another one of her servants. She sipped from a flute glass before handing it to the manicurist minion with a dismissive wave of her hand. She examined her hand for a moment and, satisfied with the results, she finally glanced up at Buffy.  
  
"So she is - and look - she's bought her little chums and some toys for me to play with. Ooh, isn't this just so quaint." She said, excitedly drumming her fingertips together.  
  
"You know what we're here for, Glory. Where is he?" Buffy eyed Glory with a look designed to conceal her nervous fear. (Please, let this work. Let us all get out of here alive. Let him be OK.)  
  
"Straight to business?" Glory pouted with mock-petulance. "But I was hoping we could have a nice chit-chat and get to know each other first. I just *love* a good gossip. Love to hear what's going on inside people's heads." She waggled her fingers suggestively while staring at Xander with a look of pure hunger. He paled visibly and gulped.  
  
"Giles, The Key." At the mention of the object of her desire, Glory's eyes snapped to Buffy to see Giles hand her the rock.   
  
The fossil flashed green once more as it passed to her and Buffy questioned Giles with her gaze. He too frowned with wonder at why the rock only seemed to respond to her, but shrugged it off, indicating with a nod in Glory's direction for her to get on with the plan.  
  
Buffy held up the fossil up for Glory to see, squeezing it hard to disguise the shaking of her hand and make sure she didn't drop it. "One Key, for one Vampire. That was the exchange right?"  
  
Glory gazed at the fossil, her eyes glazing with unshed tears. "Can it be? Can it really be?" She asked breathlessly.  
  
"There's only one way to find out."  
  
"Why is it so... ?"  
  
"Simple? Plain? Ordinary?" Buffy supplied for her. "I guess those monks knew you pretty well," she glanced suggestively around Glory's sumptuously decorated apartment, "knew you'd never look twice at a little grey rock. The Key - something so infinitely old contained in a really *old* fossil. It's quite ingenious, really."  
  
"Give it to me."  
  
"Give me what's mine first." (Mine?)  
  
Glory responded with a simple smirk that twisted something in Buffy's gut. She indicated with a nod to something behind them and Buffy filled with dread as she turned round to face it. Him. It.  
  
"*There's* your Vampire."  
  
Silence hung all around them and weighted the air, the pressure pushing against Buffy's lungs, making her struggle for breath.  
  
"Well at least I *think* that's all of him. My minions really are quite scrupulous with their sweeping up. I told them, 'every last speck, I want my carpet spotless again'." Glory sniggered and Buffy flinched as the sound grated along her spine.  
  
One of Glory's servants stepped forward and held the urn out towards her. Buffy numbly handed her weapon to Willow and took the urn, the cool porcelain stinging at her fingers that were raw from gripping her crossbow.  
  
She was aware of the hands of her friends on her and their muffled voices of concern as she stared down at the intricate pattern that decorated the urn. It occurred to her that she should check. That this wasn't real until she saw for certain.   
  
Lifting off the lid, the contents of the pot confirmed everything. Vampire ashes, she had enough experience to tell it apart from ordinary household dust. In fact she had less experience with household dust. She had an urge to run the ashes through her fingers and imagined herself up on a hillside, letting the dust flow through her fingers into the wind -  
  
"You can keep the pot thing, really. It goes with none of my outfits."  
  
Buffy spun round, her eyes burning with rage. "How could you?" Even though her body was shaking with anger, her voice was small, almost silent.  
  
"How could I? How could I *not*?" Glory let out a derisive snort as she rearranged the gold bangles on her wrist. "He was a very annoying Vampire, with that 'bloody' accent and what was *with* that hair?" She asked rhetorically. When she looked back up from her jewellery her face was hard, demanding. "Now give me my Key."  
  
"No."  
  
"No?" Glory laughed. "Oh, Buffy, that's a good one."  
  
"The deal's off." Buffy indicated to the others to back away, but as they turned to leave they were stopped by a blockade of minions. There was a blur before her and Buffy felt a shot of pain glare up her arm as her fingers were wrenched back on themselves with a sickening crack of bones. She clenched her eyes closed to the agony and when she opened them Glory was stood before her with the fossil. Panic flared in Buffy and she was forced to remind herself that it wasn't real. If she could just keep it together a little longer then -  
  
"I was going do this the nice way, but seen as you're not in the mood to co-operate..." Glory strutted away. Holding the fossil against her cheek, she sighed softly with contentment. "It sings to me. Oh, how it *sings* to me." Her face took on a look of pure ecstasy as she pressed 'The Key' between her palms. "Well hello again! It's been forever, hasn't it?"  
  
"What do you want us to do with the Slayer and her friends, oh most bountifully beauteous and powerful one?"  
  
Glory's attention didn't falter from the fossil as she spoke. "Oh, let them go. I have all that I ever wanted... all I could ever need."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Here, let me take this off you."  
  
Buffy didn't fight Willow as she took the urn out of her hands and placed it on the mantle piece above the fire. She immediately felt a pang cut through her at the loss, and her eyes remained fixed upon the urn as Willow took her hands and tried to guide her out of the lounge.  
  
"No."  
  
"Buffy?"  
  
"No, I want to stay here." She moved towards the sofa and slowly lay herself down on her side, clutching her broken fingers protectively against her chest.  
  
"Are you going to be alright?"   
  
Willow's concerned voice was almost too much to bear and Buffy clamped her eyes shut to stop the tears. She couldn't let herself cry because she couldn't say for sure what the tears were for. Him? Her mother? Just another death she couldn't prevent? Herself? Relief that Glory was fooled? Dawn?  
  
"I just want to sleep."  
  
"OK, I'll go phone Tara... check on Dawn."  
  
"'Kay." Buffy whispered without opening her eyes. She held her breath as she listened to Willow's footsteps fade away.  
  
  
(Okay, don't shoot me please :-)) 


	11. Forever is a Day

Wow, you guys don't take too kindly to Spike-icide do you?  
Thankyou for the reviews... and thanks for sticking around and not shooting me.  
Hope you like :-)  
  
CHAPTER ELEVEN:  
  
"There. All better."  
  
Buffy wiggled her newly splintered fingers and made a small noise she hoped would be interpreted as a 'thankyou'. "How's Dawn?"  
  
"She's still at Xander's. I told Xander not to tell her about..." Willow's voice drifted off and she began to clear the first aid paraphernalia off the table.  
  
Buffy nodded. "That's probably for the best. Is she staying at there tonight?"  
  
"Yup, unless you want -"  
  
"No. Not tonight. Just in case, you know... Glory."  
  
"Yeah, I know." Willow's brow furrowed as she sat down opposite Buffy.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"I know you, Will. That is *so* not a 'nothing' face. That is very much a 'something' face. So, come on, out with it."  
  
"I've just been thinking, is all."  
  
Buffy smiled. "That makes a change. So what's that brain of yours been all contemplative over now?"  
  
"I was just -- are you sure Glory would have killed Spike? I mean, I know she hasn't got the sharpest mind but... don't you think there's even the possibility that -?"  
  
"Will... I-I can't think like that right now, or *ever* even. I don't have the energy." She winced as she pressed on her broken hand to push herself up to stand. "I really think this makes sense. I mean it happens - people spend too long around me they end up... gone."  
  
Willow's eyes widened as she said with conviction: "Buffy, that's not true."  
  
Buffy hung her head. "Maybe. I'm just not big on the idea of embracing I-love-life-isms right now, OK?"  
  
"It's always OK."  
  
They shared a look and Buffy forced a small smile. "A-are you going to stay?"  
  
"Yep, if that's what you want?"  
  
"It's what I want... I'm gonna go to go to bed for a bit."  
  
"Sure. I'll be here."  
  
Buffy walked steadily upstairs. She wondered vaguely why she didn't feel worse and if she was still in shock but she remembered shock, she remembered everything that came after it. She remembered enough to know that this wasn't shock. It was something else. Something she couldn't name but had experienced all too often.  
  
She walked into her blacked-out room and didn't bother removing the blankets from the windows. It was dark outside anyway. She gravitated to her desk and sat in front of the mirror. Her gaze locked on her shadowed reflection, trying to make out her features in the darkness.  
  
After staring for immeasurable eternities her focus slipped and the silhouette of her head became just another indefinable shape to add to the myriad of grey forms that clouded the mirror. She stared into the mass as it swarmed and spiralled around her. Eventually the stinging of her unblinking eyes forced her to break away. As she closed her eyes she became aware of something and simultaneously a thought struck her.  
  
(Didn't I take those blankets down last night?)  
  
Her head spun round and she finally saw it. The body on her bed, so dark, so deathly still, so asleep, so... him.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Willow!" She half-squeaked, half-whispered when she found her friend reading a magazine in the kitchen. Willow read to the end of the sentence and looked up.  
  
"Hey Buffy, you decided against bed? You hungry? I could probably make you something. Well, you know, as long as that 'something' doesn't involve cook-"  
  
"Willow, I can't go to bed."  
  
"Can't you sleep? I suppose it's only to be expected." she glanced into her coffee momentarily, "I can do a 'sweet dreams' spell for you i-if you like. It's no big..."  
  
"No, Willow. You don't understand, there's -"  
  
"You know, I'm getting pretty tired of hearing that lately!"  
  
"H-hearing what?"  
  
"That 'I don't understand'." Willow rolled her eyes as she gestured the quotation marks. "I'm really trying here, I know -"  
  
"Willow! No, that's not it. You're doing great, really." Buffy reinforced the statement by fixing Willow's eyes. "I need you to come upstairs and tell me what you see."  
  
"What I see?"  
  
"Just... please!"  
  
"Well OK, but if you want me to look at one of those Magic-Eye posters, you're about four years too late."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Well?!" Buffy prodded her friend in the arm but didn't succeed in breaking her stare.  
  
"B...uf...fy."  
  
"Willow?"  
  
"Sp...ike, he's..."  
  
"You see him?"  
  
"Uh-huh... and he's *in* your bed."   
  
The relief was immense. She wasn't just suffering from a bad case of wishful thinking. He *was* really here. But then - Where did that leave her? Leave them?  
  
She stepped forward, over the threshold and over to his body. With the light from the hall streaming through into the room she could make out the different hues of monochrome shading on his body and clothing. In the light she could make out the tear of his T-shirt and not much else, his face masked in heavy shadow. Holding her breath, she reached down and gently touched his arm to stir him. When he made no move she pressed his arm harder and then harder gain, impacting the mattress.  
  
She frowned. "Spike?"  
  
Nothing.  
  
"Spike?" She said it louder and began to shake him.  
  
Still nothing.  
  
"Willow?" She looked back at the doorway and Willow took a step forward to flick the light switch.  
  
"Oh God, Buffy!"   
  
Willow wasn't looking at Buffy though. Her horror-filled eyes were fixed on the bed. Buffy's insides filled with the familiar dread (He can't be dead, he's a Vampire, he can't be dead.) as she turned round to it. Him.  
  
"Oh my God."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Is he still out of it?" Willow asked as Buffy entered the kitchen.  
  
"Out for the count. Whatever that means."  
  
"Maybe it's something to do with sheep." Willow said, the majority of her attention focused on the spell ingredients on front of her.  
  
"Sheep?"  
  
"Yeah, you know, like counting sheep when you can't get to sleep."  
  
"Right, you may be on to something there. So... how's that going?" Buffy leaned against the worktop and looked into the bowl of herb-y stuff Willow was mixing. "Is that sage?"  
  
"Uh-huh, with a few other things you *really* don't want to know about."  
  
"And you say you can't cook." They shared a momentary grin before Willow went back to work. "Thanks for doing this, Will - you don't have to, you know."  
  
Willow silenced Buffy with a wave of her pestle. "Yes I do! Magic's what I do best... Besides, it's not the Big Cure - at most it'll bring him to and ease a few of his... wounds and stuff." Returning to her spell book she gave the 'recipe' a quick once-over. Satisfied with that she smiled as she sprinkled some crystallised substance over the mix with a whispered incantation.  
  
Buffy waited for something to happen... but nothing.  
  
"Did it work?"  
  
"Yep."  
  
"H-how can you tell?"  
  
Willow shrugged. "I just know."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Done."  
  
"Done?" Buffy's gaze flickered from Willow to Spike and back again.  
  
"Well, er, it may take some time." Her friend smiled with a shrug and then seemed to remember something. "I'll leave you two alo - well, you know."  
  
"Thanks, Will."  
  
"No, problem." Willow glanced at Spike. "I think it's working." With that she left the room, closing the door to as she went.  
  
Buffy sighed wearily, all the stress of the day beginning to tire her. (Has it really only been one day? No... It's been a lifetime.) Her eyes settled on Spike's form and she decided, with pleasant surprise, that Willow was right. The bruises on his face were still there but they had faded from black to a midnight blue in just a few seconds. The changes subtle but perceptible.  
  
Instinctively she reached out and brushed his blood-caked hair back off his face, only to pull away with a start as she felt him stir. She became aware of her heartbeat quickening and forgot how to breathe as she watched him intently, waiting for another movement, no matter how small.  
  
Nothing. Those eternities stretched out their tired muscles and Buffy decided she should do the same.  
  
With another sigh, she felt her mind call 'time' and shut down for the day. (Enough. Too much.) She settled herself down next to him, watching his unflinching face until her eyelids could hold themselves open no longer and she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
Swimming into consciousness, she was aware of his eyes on her before she was even aware of herself. Her body tensed as she summoned up the will to open her eyes and see him.  
  
The blue of his irises was the first thing she saw and as their gazes locked, something struck through her body like a sliver of electricity. Tearing her eyes from his, she took in the rest of his face. The bruises had faded even further and now his face was coloured with shades of green, yellow and pale blue. She saw fingers come up to caress his cheek and took a moment to recognise them as her own. His eyelids fluttered to as she carefully traced the edges of his bruises, drawing an invisible pattern over his marred features. (Deja vu.) Bringing her fingers down his neck she rested her hand lightly against his chest.  
  
He was looking at her again and there was something in his eyes she recognised: a pleading, an invitation. She understood and shifted her body against his, resting her head on his shoulder. He drew his arm around her momentarily, before letting it drop weakly round her back. She felt him suck in a sharp intake of air.  
  
"Does this hurt... my head here?"  
  
"Yes!" He hissed. "But don't you dare move."  
  
She took a deep breath and inhaled him. His familiar scent mixed in with the unmistakable pungency of dried blood and something else, something putrid. She knew the smell but didn't have to energy to question it. Smiling slightly, she let the air out of her lungs with a long, shaky sigh while retaining the inherent comfort his smell gave her. Relaxing into him, she closed her eyes once again, the relief washing her with another wave of weariness.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
He shifted slightly, wincing at every tiny movement. "...So I made it... Took me long enough."  
  
"A day."  
  
"Is that all it was? I felt like forever."  
  
"I know."  
  
Their eyes met again and one side of his mouth pulled up into a lop-sided smile, an irresistible smile. Leaning forward she pressed her lips against his, smiling into the kiss as she felt him respond, matching her lightness. As they parted she took one of his hands onto her lap and absently toyed with it.  
  
"Glory, s-she told me you were dead." She didn't look up from his hand.  
  
"Well, that's just evil." She still didn't look up but she could tell he was smiling, she could feel it. "I don't know which was worse, the really quite imaginative torture, or the incessant *yammering* about a bloody 'key'." Buffy's head shot up. "I thought, if she says that word one more time, I'm gonna -" He was stopped by the urgency of Buffy's expression. "What?"  
  
"There's something you should know... A-about The Key... I-it's -"  
  
"Dawn."  
  
Her eyes widened with surprise the panic had surged through her before her common sense could inform her that Glory hadn't known.  
  
"Wha - How did you know?"  
  
He shrugged and obviously regretted the action. "Ow! Remind me not to do that again." A grin flitted over his scowling face, only to falter when Buffy's seriousness didn't abate. "I don't know, this 'Glory' bint was just prattling on and on and, all of a sudden, I just... knew. Like epiphany, you know? Bang!" He made an explosive gesture just in front of his face with his free hand.  
  
"Bang?"  
  
"Alright then, if you're gonna get all pedantic on me, maybe it was more of a quiet but profound click."   
  
His eyes danced with mirth and Buffy smiled. She looked down to see that she was running her finger along the groove of his lifeline and frowned back up at him. (So many damn questions.) "Why didn't you tell Glory?"  
  
His shrug was followed by another wince. "Din't occur to me."  
  
"It 'didn't *occur* to you'?! It never occurred to you, while Glory was pummelling you into your component parts, that you should give her what she wanted?" She stared incredulously at him, her mind racing over all sorts of possibilities.  
  
"It's precisely *because* she was getting all creative with the canvas of my body that I didn't give her what she wanted." His voice grazed against her nerves, it was so raw, so harsh... so alive.   
  
"She thought she could see right inside of me with them fingers of hers," he pointed to a circular wound on his chest, "but she didn't know anything about me. She didn't realise that if I gave up Dawn, then I..." His voice wavered and he drew to a close, his eyes falling from hers.  
  
"Go on." She had to hear this. She had to know.  
  
He still didn't meet her eyes and she didn't force him to. After an eternity of silence, after she had begun to think, with regret, that she would never hear his voice again, he began again, with little more than a whisper. "W-when Drusilla left me, two years ago, I had one thought and it brought me back here... And then when she - after what happened, I had one thought that kept me alive, one thought and it keeps on bringing me back here."  
  
He took a breath for his next sentence, only to let it out, unused. His eyes met hers and she was startled by the intensity of his stare, by what fuelled the intensity.  
  
"All the time Glory had me, all I could think about... was getting back to you."  
  
  
END PART ONE - PART TWO - 


	12. What a Week

Sorry about the delay.  
Thanks a lot for the reviews :-)   
  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER ONE:  
  
She considered him. Her eyes taking in the tatters of his blood caked T-shirt and the starkly contrasting peeps of white dressing underneath. She reached out tentatively to touch the gauze protecting the wound nearest his heart.  
  
"How's it going under there?" It was barely a whisper, she found herself wondering whether she had actually said the words or had simply heard her own thoughts.  
  
"Better... I think." His voice was drowsy, no more than a lazy drawl. He watched her through weighty eyelids as she held her hand over the wound in some kind of spiritual healing gesture. Her eyebrows knitted and she glanced up at his face, avoiding his eyes still.  
  
"Where did the shirt go? You know with the ever-so-stylish nail polish logo." One side of her mouth tugged at the memory of finding him and that ridiculous letter. Only it wasn't so ridiculous anymore.  
  
"I do have more than one change of clothes, Slayer." His facial muscles were lax and free of expression but there was humour in his voice and she responded to it.  
  
"Really? That why I never saw you in anything other than that red shirt ensemble for two years?"  
  
"What? It was a look."  
  
She smiled. More to herself but he caught it. He never missed anything it seemed. "Yeah... It was you."  
  
"You not liking the all black?"  
  
"It makes you look all morbid-y."  
  
"Well I was going for moody and dangerous, but the old 'nighted colour' holds other, more obvious symbolism."  
  
"Death, grief."  
  
They both nodded slightly and the silence wound them together for an instant before she severed the moment.  
  
"You have other clothes, in the car?"  
  
"Yeah, in the boot."  
  
She grinned and moved to get off the bed, suddenly grateful for the release. "Good. I didn't want to offend you earlier when you were all barely conscious and all, but you really *are* starting to smell."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
She wandered into the lounge and placed the bundle of dark clothing onto the coffee table, barely acknowledging Willow's presence.  
  
"Hey, Buffy." Willow glanced up from the hefty volume of something-or-other she was studying and her voice startled Buffy from her mindless musing.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"How are you?"  
  
"Oh... fine. It's all a bit..." (...much)   
  
The urn still stood crudely on the mantle piece, next to a photo of her mother and she cringed at the sight. A desperate desire to swipe the offending pottery off its perch and smash it underfoot gripped at her but she remained in her seat. Her muscles coiling in waves of impotent rage. The apathy was all encompassing, drawing her in on herself.  
  
"Yeah." Willow smiled sweetly, as if reading her mind. "How is... he?"  
  
"The spell... cleared up his face... but his body..." She trailed off, her eyes falling to the floor and tracing invisible patterns on the carpet until she reached her feet.  
  
"Yeah it only lasts so long, only does so much."  
  
"Can you top it up?" She asked, not looking up from her bare feet. She'd been outside with no shoes and hadn't noticed.  
  
"No, it was only a basic spell. I can look something else up if -"  
  
"No, it's okay... besides, Vampire-healing right." She realised her intended statement had sounded more like a question and in defeat fell back against the sofa cushions.  
  
"Have you...?" Buffy could anticipate the question from Willow's nervous blush.  
  
"No. I mean he's still... it's not... it'd be... weird."  
  
Willow's head drew back in confusion, her hands wavering over the text in her lap. "Weird? You've... before, haven't you?"  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
"And it was...?"  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
"...But?"  
  
Buffy closed her eyes and gripped at the tension at the bridge of her nose. The pressure created a melange of psychedelic imagery on the black canvas of her vision and for a few moments she experimented with different grades of pressure, pressing her eyelids with the heels of her hands and watching the results until her eyeballs began to ache. She opened her eyes and it took a moment for her sight to re-adjust. Swirly ghosts danced in her line of vision for minutes afterwards.  
  
"Everything's different now." She said finally.  
  
"Different how? Because of what Glory did to him?"  
  
Buffy squirmed in her seat and folded her arms. "There's something else."  
  
Willow remained silent, allowing Buffy the space to carry on but then seemed to realise that she needed prompting. "What else?"  
  
"He told me..." she took a deep breath and bulldozed through with the rest, "thathehasfeelingsforme."  
  
"What? Say again, and this time in English."  
  
Buffy squirmed again, uncomfortable with the telling of it, whilst needing to get it out of herself, but also realising that saying it made it real, not just some crazy figment of her stressed imagination. "He said that he's had feelings for me... for some time now."  
  
"And that's bad because...?"  
  
Buffy stared at her friend and couldn't decide which was her strongest impulse - angry frustration or happy relief. "Willow!"  
  
"What? It doesn't matter what you feel about him. You don't have to decide that today or even tomorrow. But knowing where he stands... surely it's a good thing that you don't have to second guess him, like most men?"   
  
(Oh sure, use logic on me, why don't you?)   
  
"*Before* I knew where we stood. We were just two... people... grieving together and we didn't have to think that far ahead. But now," she gestured helplessly with her hands. "Now all I can see is 'far head' and it scares me because I don't see how he fits into that. A-and if we have sex, it won't just be this... comfort thing... it'll be like this huge deal an-"  
  
"It'll be like making love."  
  
She let out a long, shaky breath and stared at her friend. "I'm not ready for that, Will. Not now, I don't even know when or if, or... with him."  
  
"So, what now?"  
  
Buffy shrugged. "I don't know."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"You know, for a Vampire, you sure do sleep a lot." The closed-eyed, slack muscled form didn't answer her. Her mouth twitched as she moved round the bed and began to fold his clothes.   
  
Struggling to make out colours and details in the low light she crossed to the window and reached out to switch the blinds open. Pausing suddenly, with her hand on the thread, she sighed heavily. (I could resent this. The darkness.) But when she looked back at him, her lips twitched again. (I hate you.)  
  
She began to hum softly to herself as she put his clothes in a drawer and as she went over to pick up the cup on the bedside table she felt his eyes on her.  
  
"Hey."  
  
He grunted, using his energy to push himself up to seating position. Buffy noted the emptiness of the cup and glanced back at him. Big mistake.  
  
"You hungry?" She saw the flash of his eyes in the split-second before he grasped her wrist and yanked her down on to his lap.  
  
"Oh, yes." Grinning and keeping his darkened eyes on her, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it, his tongue darting forward to dig into the centre of her palm.   
  
She had stopped breathing and air caught in her throat when she tried to inhale. She felt her heartbeat step up and surges of panic and lust sweep through her. The panic won out. Pulling her hand out of his grasp, she impelled herself towards the door. "I-I have to go talk to Willow, a-and get you some blood." She dare not look back at his face as she made her exit.  
  
-  
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-  
-  
  
"You sure you want me to go?" Willow asked as they made their way to the door. "I can stay if -"  
  
"No, really. I'll be okay," she proved her point with a borrowed resolve-face, "besides, I need you and Tara to look after Dawn for the next couple of days. I don't want her to see him like that... she'd only blame herself."  
  
"So, you'll let me know... when it's safe."  
  
(Is it ever safe?) Buffy nodded and opened the door. She even managed a smile despite the dread creeping into her bones. "Course, tell Dawn to phone me."  
  
"Will do... And be careful."  
  
"I'm the Slayer, I live in a house full of stakes."  
  
"That's not what I meant."   
  
Willow caught her eyes meaningfully and held them until Buffy nodded.  
  
"I will."  
  
And then she was gone, leaving Buffy alone... with him.  
  
"Blood!"  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"There you go."  
  
He took the mug from her in silence, all the while studying her with a heavy gaze. (He knows.) She watched as he drank, not bothering to turn away from her like Angel used to, not even looking away from her as he wiped his reddened mouth and licked his fingers. (I could resent that. The audacity. The unwillingness to hide what he is.) But again her mouth twitched and she found herself distracted once more by the pink tip of his tongue as it flickered out over his lips.   
  
The continued silence and rising tension collected in tokens of pressure in a corner of her gut and she felt sick. Though not with disgust and she thought that maybe she could resent that, resent that he didn't disgust her.  
  
"There something you wanna tell me?" He asked finally, his voice impossibly stable and it tipped at her internal struggle for equilibrium.  
  
She took a deep breath. "I'll be sleeping in Dawn's room tonight."  
  
He nodded and she felt a stab of frustration pierce her veil of calm.  
  
"Aren't you going to ask me why?"  
  
He shrugged, the action obviously causing less pain now. "Do *you* even know why?"  
  
"Yes... No."  
  
"What is it?" He fixed his eyes on her and she could tell he was looking for cues in her face, but she knew he would find none. "Do you want me to go?"  
  
"No!" She yelled, surprising both of them at the volume and insistence in her voice. (Maybe he doesn't understand after all.) "No, that's the last thing I want."  
  
"Then what *do* you want?" His voice was still so level and she found herself wanting to shout at him just to get him raise his voice too. She suddenly felt so foolish and lonely with her confused desires.  
  
"I don't know." She dropped down onto the bed by his feet and concentrated on the hands clasped at her knees. Focusing particularly on the still-splintered digits, she wiggled them experimentally but they simply felt numb. "Things for you... you've had longer to deal with this."  
  
"You think I liked it?" She looked at him, knowing she wasn't going to like what he had to say, but needing to hear it all the same. Needing to hear everything he had to say. "You think I liked having Dru tell me, every time I denied her something, every time I couldn't give her the attention she needed, every time she found comfort in another *thing's* arms, that it was because of *you*?" His voice was straining now and a small part of her relaxed at the tiny victory.  
  
"She was always telling me 'go back and see your Slayer', kept getting these visions of big snakes and men in lab coats, even made me promise, if anything happened to her, I'd come back here to you." He came forward off his cushions, making her lean back to recover her precious inches of space.   
  
"And I promised all right, promised I'd come here and rip your throat out. I was intent on that and when she - she died all I could see was you. My vision was red and black with you. Glaring all around me, willing me on with murderous intent."  
  
She felt herself stiffen into Slayer-mode at his harshness, her back straightening, and her eyes lifting to confront his. "What changed?" Her heart was thumping and every limb was alive with a pulsating throb flaring down her veins to the very tips of the toes she dug into the carpet and the fingertips that gripped the sheets. She could finally feel her hands and feet again.  
  
He sighed and settled back again, the tension diffusing and scattering to the ground like ashes. "Your mother died."  
  
The fight was knocked out of her, the blow that washed humbling peace over her. Her breathing became shallow and the tension drained from her body, leaving tiny tingles that could easily develop into pins and needles in her fingers and toes.  
  
"This is all about my mom?" She whispered through a suddenly tight throat.  
  
It was his turn to look at her as if she didn't understand anything. His expression lacking the energy for full incredulity, his head moved slowly from side to side and his eyelids dipped. "No. It's all about you... has been for a long time."  
  
"I don't... I can't." She took a deep breath to allow herself a pause to think.   
  
"You were suddenly in my life and I didn't have time to decide how I felt about that... and then you were gone." She checked with a glance to see if he was listening and he was, in that patient manner that infuriated as much as it relaxed her.   
  
"And I didn't have time have time to decide how much I missed you, and then I thought you were dead... and I didn't have time to know how much I would grieve for you, and then you were back." She faced him, her hands on his knees. "I need time."  
  
There was a slow drift of movement on his face and his lips crept into a wide smile. "Well time's something I find myself with quite a lot of, as it happens."  
  
"Lend me some?" She returned his smile and felt his hand on hers before a glance down confirmed it.  
  
"Sure." He grinned at her and took another gulp of blood. 


	13. Sun Day

Okay a bit of light, dare I say 'fluffiness'? But damn it, I'm all spoilery depressed and needy of an antidote.  
The reviews are really quite blush-worthy, thankyou.  
Hope you like :-)  
  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER TWO  
  
She smiled awake, blinking at the bright early morning sunlight pouring into the room from the uncovered window. Shuffling forward she positioned herself in a yellow patch of warmth and basked, her eyes closed and smile still in place. (Hmm sunlight... Sunlight?!) Her eyes shot open and her hand patted the mattress next to her, searching frantically until she remembered (Dawn's room).  
  
Her eyes closed in relief but her calm was irretrievable. With a groan, she pushed herself out of bed and padded her way to the bathroom.  
  
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-  
  
Passing by her room she was surprised to see the door ajar. She poked her head through the gap and was more surprised to see the room empty. Frowning and consciously ignoring the stirring of dread in her toes, she wandered downstairs.  
  
The lounge was empty too she felt tendrils twist upwards from her feet. (Don't panic!) Something caught her eye as she was about to head for the kitchen and she marched towards the mantle-piece, plucking the urn from its place.  
  
"I've got a few things I'd like to do to you, mister."  
  
She carried the pot at arm's length as she headed towards the kitchen.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
The loud crash broke her stare and she jumped back from the explosion at her feet. She dropped down to her knees as a blush burned her face and waved her hands ineffectually over the mess, not knowing where to begin.  
  
"Here, careful, you'll hurt yourself."   
  
His hands came into her range of vision and began to precariously pick the sharp edged shatters of porcelain out from the mix, leaving only a mass of fine grey particles.  
  
"It's not... your mother, is it?"  
  
Her throat leaped, allowing a laugh to escape. She shook her head and struggled to contain her smile as she looked back up to see his perplexed expression.  
  
"No, she was buried. *This*," she pinched at the dust, letting it sprinkle like salt from her fingers, "is what Glory made me believe was you."  
  
He scowled and raked a hand through the earthy mass. "Not very aesthetically pleasing is it?" He studied one of the fragments of the urn he held in his other hand. "Talk about garish."  
  
"Yeah 'cos you're really worried about style when you're compost."  
  
He grinned. "It *is* Vampire," he commented, sifting the ashes through his fingers, "she went to a lot of trouble to dupe you."  
  
She met his eyes. "It was worth it."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Yellow?! What, am I jaundiced?" His fingers went to his face as if he could tell just by touch alone. (Maybe he can. I must make a note to start asking these things.)  
  
"No, you're perfectly pale. You're just... all bathed in yellowness. It was a shock." She sipped at her coffee in an attempt to remain nonchalant.  
  
"Indirect light." He illustrated his point with a sweep of a hand, taking in the light, but not too bright airiness of the kitchen.  
  
"I know," she blushed and averted her eyes, "but I only usually see you in the dark, or under electric light... It was like seeing you for the first time." Her words had grown steadily quieter until they could hardly even be classed as a whisper. Trust his Vampire hearing to catch it all though.  
  
His mouth flickered with the beginnings of a smile that didn't come to fruition and he took another bite of -  
  
"What *is* that?"  
  
He paused mid-chew and stared at her, his lips slightly parted. Swallowing the food with a gulp, he cleared his throat before speaking. (He has manners?) "Well it's one of those terribly newfangled things that people like to call sandwiches, Love, af-"  
  
(Back to 'Love'? Fair enough.)  
  
"No, I mean, what's it doing on your plate, i-in your mouth?"  
  
"Was a bit peckish, got an attack of the gurglies. It is breakfast time, ain't it?"  
  
"Not for Vampires, it's not. Shouldn't you be all of the reverse sleep-patterns and what's with the eating? It's majorly wiggy."  
  
He sat up, straightening his back. "I seem to be disturbing you a lot this morning."  
  
"No, you disturb me a lot, *all* the time."  
  
"In a good way, or a bad way." His eyes were glistening with mischief and she struggled to keep her poker face.  
  
"In the *worst* way."   
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Good!"   
  
He smirked at her and took another bite and she huffed indignantly, before her the smile she had been holding hostage broke free and betrayed her.  
  
"What you got in that, anyway?"  
  
"Chocolate spread."  
  
"Dawn won't be pleased."  
  
He shrugged. "Some things can be replaced."  
  
Their eyes met and one side of her mouth lifted in agreement at the unsaid contrary.  
  
"Can I get a taste of that?" She asked, coming over to his side of the counter.  
  
He pushed his plate towards her but she ignored it, moving closer still and placing her hands on either side of his face. "I didn't mean from there."  
  
It seemed like forever since they had been here. So long it felt like never. The warmth of an internal smile and sigh of relief rained through her as she relaxed into him, feeling the merest gentle touch of his fingers on her arms.  
  
Her tongue slid across his and rolled up to trace the roof of his mouth and the back of his teeth. He did taste of chocolate but she could also make out the distinctive bitter, almost metallic hint of tobacco and the peculiar salty tang she had long presumed to be the after-taste of blood.   
  
"Mmm ... good." She touched a finger to her lips and smiled down into his half-lidded eyes. Her hand came up to his cheek briefly, before she drifted away to make herself a chocolate spread sandwich of her own.  
  
-  
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-  
  
The sun was hot against her back as she walked towards the magic shop. The humidity beginning to weary her and then a whisper of a breeze teased at her hair and caressed the back of her neck.  
  
She smiled into a memory of his lukewarm touch that felt so cool against her heated flesh, like a balm awakening and alleviating the numb pain in her body and spirit. The significance of each contact of his hands and lips collecting inside of her and amassing, solidifying, her internal structures yielding and making way as she created a place for him.  
  
It had been so easy, too easy, and she knew that the hardest part would be to let him in, let him imprint himself within her and make himself at home.  
  
It was that final courage she lacked, the strength to trust her instincts, to trust him by admitting she *knew* him. There was always the doubt, always her past to hold her back, always those moments when she looked at him and realised that she didn't know him at all.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
The familiar and comforting chime of the doorbell sounded as she entered the shop that was alive with a thrum of customers and a radiantly gleeful shop assistant extraordinairre.  
  
"Hey, Anya." She waved.  
  
Anya paused mid sales patter and regarded at her in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink kind of way that made Buffy dread what was going to come out of her mouth. Only she said nothing, simply turned back to the customer, picking up her thread from the exact same place.  
  
(OK, weird.)  
  
Buffy moved forward, minding a couple of browsers as she made her way over to the table. Tara and Willow were sat studying amidst the chaos and both looked up from their books at the same time. Willow beamed brightly, without overkill, and Buffy visibly relaxed. She had been worried about tension and atmosphere but detected none. Maybe it was a good thing Xander wasn't here.  
  
"Hi, Buffy."  
  
"Hey Will, Tara, how's it going?" She asked as she sat herself down. "How's Dawn?"  
  
"Fine. Xander took her to school this morning."  
  
"And she's OK? I mean, she phoned last night, but she's OK today?"  
  
Tara nodded, an understanding and reassuring smile lifting her lips. "Oh yes, I t-think she misses you though."  
  
"Yeah... me too." Buffy's eyes fell to the table. "I think tomorrow should be OK, if you can bring her back?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
"Me and Tara we're just talking about celebrating some time this week. Now Glory's been all dupified, I think some Bronzing is in order." Willow whipped up some enticing enthusiasm.  
  
"It sounds good, I sure could do with that. When?"  
  
"Ah, Buffy!"  
  
She looked up to see Giles and smiled timidly at him. Surely he would have something to say, surely there would at least be a hint of admonishment in his voice. But no, she listened as he spoke, her ears pricked for any implicit negativity or disappointment.   
  
Nothing.   
  
"...But you really must get back to it soon." He said of training and she nodded eagerly.  
  
"Sure, will do."  
  
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-  
-  
  
When she got home he was sprawled out on the sofa, thankfully not asleep for once. She noted that he had changed his shirt and was wearing some blue number, the same colour of his eyes. She stood against the doorjamb and smiled when he looked up at her.  
  
"Hi."  
  
"Hey, what ya doing?"  
  
He indicated the television with a point of the remote control. "Just catching up on me tele."  
  
Her eyes drifted to the object in question. "Uh-huh. *Dawson's Creek*? Wouldn't have had that down as something you'd watch."  
  
"It's classic angsty drama, you can't go wrong. Dawson's a complete plank but the other's are OK. I like that Jen," his eyes gleamed at her, "she has fire."  
  
She felt herself grin. "You like fire, huh?"  
  
He invited her forward with a pat of the space next to him and she obliged.  
  
"Oh yes. It's so passionate and dangerous," He smiled at her as she came to crawl out to lie next to him. "A Vampire shouldn't be able to touch it without getting burnt, without it being the death of him," his hand hovered over the bare skin of her arm and she shivered, the tiny hairs rising on goose-pimples, as if reaching for him. "But it warms me, purges me, breathes life into me with each lick of it's flames."  
  
His gaze was focused on his hovering hand and when he lifted his eyes to hers, he appeared to start with a small jolt backwards and a snatching away of his hand.  
  
"Now watch the show."  
  
She rolled her eyes but complied, rolling over to look at the television.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Did you shower or something?"  
  
He murmured the affirmative through his drowsiness, his eyes not opening.  
  
"Thought so, you don't smell of the sewers any more." She snuggled into him.   
  
"Merfer?"  
  
"No, you smell all fresh and watery and clean."  
  
"Mmpfh."  
  
"It wasn't too difficult was it? With the pain?"  
  
"Numm."  
  
"What..." she paused, her finger tracing the exposed section of his sternum, "what do I smell of? And be nice."  
  
His eyes blinked with and with a small smile he leant in, inhaling her and exhaling with a soft groan. "Day."  
  
"Day?"  
  
"Of fresh air, breezes and daylight."  
  
Her lips curled and she rested her head back on the smooth material of his shirt. "Oh, OK." 


	14. Eve

Just to warn you, there could be a while before a new part as I have exams and such. So no cliff-hanger ending.  
Thanks for the reviews you lovely people.  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER THREE  
  
"I need to patrol!" She declared suddenly. "I haven't been out for days. Demons are probably running a-mock, in the way that they do. A-mocking all round town, with evil grins and dastardly plans." She looked across the sofa at him.  
  
"So?"  
  
"Well..." she began, remembering the technique from the thousand times she had wrapped her mom round her little finger, remembering it most recently from Dawn, "you could come too?"  
  
He raised an eyebrow at that. "And do what? Watch while you kill my kind? Not my idea of fun, Love."  
  
"You don't have to watch." She leaned in and shuffled closer to him. "You could close your eyes, real tight, like I used to tell Dawn to when scary things came on television."  
  
He still didn't react, not even looking up from the book he was reading. (He reads?) She bounced into a cross-armed mock-sulk and caught him smiling out of the corner of her eye. She grinned and nudged him. "Come on, it'd just be like a walk and you *really* don't have to watch."  
  
He finally looked at her, just briefly but enough for her to know that he was going to win the point. "So if I don't see it, it doesn't happen, right?"   
  
(OK, there's that evil logic thing again.)  
  
She said nothing, stared forward, her mouth twisting in defeat. The minutes trickled away and she began to hum to fend off the eternal silence that encroached on them. She examined her nails half-heartedly and sighed again. And still, more minutes, more nervously filled silence, while he just carried on reading, turning a page every thousandth eternity.  
  
Her patience finally splintered under the strain with an almost audible crackle and she snatched the book away from him, laughing at his feeble growl.  
  
"Are you being sponsored to be this annoying?"  
  
"No, you get this for free. Count yourself lucky."  
  
"Oh, yeah, I'm a lucky man." His voice was hardened with something very much like sarcasm and she frowned at him for a moment before dragging him up.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-   
  
"Are you ashamed to be seen with me?" She asked, noting his tenseness.  
  
He scanned the area in front of them and then turned his keen eyes on her. "'Course I am. Got a reputation to uphold, you know."  
  
Rolling her eyes, she walked into him, making him veer dangerously close to a lamppost. He scraped to a stop and glared at her. "Watch where you're going, woman."  
  
"I tell you what, if some Vamps come by, I'll pretend to be frisking you."  
  
"Oh yeah, that'll work. It'll be all round town that I'm some sort of nancy boy that lets the Slayer pick on him."  
  
"What is your prob- ?" Watching him scope the street again, paying particular attention to alleyways and shadowed spots, it occurred to her just what he was doing. "Stop that, you just ate."  
  
He turned to her with a smirk and she was alarmed by the complete lack of warmth in his expression. There was humour in his eyes but it was icy and his gaze jagged like the shattered fragments of that damned urn. (Big-Bad-mode. I should have expected it. Any minute now he's gonna light a cigarette on me.)  
  
"Just because I'm all full up doesn't stop me drooling over the desert trolley." He sneered and freeze surged through her veins.  
  
"Oh my God! That's really all people are to you isn't it? Just *'Desert'*?" She spat the word out through gritted teeth as she endeavoured to maintain a hold over her rising anger.  
  
"And this is what, some big revelation to you? News-flash here, Love," he pointed at himself, "evil, blood-sucking Vampire."  
  
She flinched and stared at him, wondering where he had gone. This was him, sure, the 'him' she knew from her parent-teacher night, the him she knew from that Halloween. But not the him of the past week. Maybe it was all the same, all part of the same wacky package. He was trying to show her again, give her a way out. Again.  
  
"What's up, Love? It's not like I'll make you watch. You can close your eyes, *real* tight, and pretend I'm something I'm not." He stepped up to her, invading her space, but she stood firm, jutting her chin up defiantly. "If you don't see it, it doesn't happen. Right?"  
  
The anger shot up her arm and she wasn't aware of the movement, only the consequences. His stagger backwards, his hand coming up to his eye, the murderous glower that dissolved far too quickly, the naked hurt that flitted across his features for the briefest moment. But then the confrontational glare was back in place and the hand came back down to his side to reveal a flaring pink mark. He was marred again, only this time by her.  
  
She forced herself not to waver, pulling her abdominal muscles in against the nauseating strain in her solar plexus. "I told you before, kill anyone and I'll 'punctuate your full-stop', all right." Her voice was low enough to be threatening and stable enough to be believed and she willed herself on.  
  
"Now I'm going home now. You can do what the hell you like." She fixed him with a stare and stepped down, turning on her heel and beginning to walk away.  
  
"You're not the only one who has a problem with this, Buffy." She stopped at the sound of her name, but didn't turn around. She could hear his soles scuffing along the pavement in frustration and then felt his solid presence behind her as he whispered: "I hate it."  
  
Gasping as air surged in her throat, she spun round to face him. "Then why are you still here? Why don't you just leave, like -?"  
  
"You really don't get it do you?" His voice was so quiet, she almost didn't recognise it.  
  
"How can I understand any of this?"  
  
"How can I *expect* you to?" The loud bellow contrasting against his previous whisper.  
  
"Then why, why don't you explain it to me? What are you doing with me, when you hate me *so* much?"  
  
He opened his mouth to speak, to yell, and then paused, blinking as if he had forgotten what he had to say or even the question itself. Finally he looked at her, his eyes free of all anger and frustration, reflecting the moonlight and something else she couldn't place.  
  
"I hate that I *don't* hate you."   
  
He held her stare for just a moment longer and was then striding away from her. She let him go. Knowing that he would be back.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
Lifting her head as she returned from patrol she smiled at the sight in front of her.  
  
"Hey."  
  
He didn't reply, simply acknowledging her with a nod of his head, taking a long drag from his cigarette and continuing to stare into the middle distance.   
  
He shrugged along the step and she came to sit beside him. They sat in silence, both watching the writhes of thin blue smoke quivering up from his fizzling cigarette.  
  
"I don't think I hate you either." She said finally, her eyes still fixed forwards.  
  
"You don't 'think'?"  
  
She felt him look at her and smiled. "No, I know. I haven't hated you for a long time. Not since that... thing with Angel."  
  
She met his eyes briefly and he nodded again. The cigarette smoke became very interesting once more and the silence resumed, taking an umpire's seat above them as they sat, transfixed by the ethereal blue.  
  
"Seen as you mentioned all this not-hate stuff," she began, "how much extremey-ness are we talking here?"  
  
"Not much."  
  
She frowned and found herself looking into his eyes again. "So you still kinda dislike me?"  
  
He let out a short laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling for an instant. "You know was the opposite of hate is?"  
  
"No, but I have a feeling you're gonna tell me."  
  
He smiled slightly at that and she wondered why she wasn't more panicked by this, more nervous.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"Nothing?"  
  
"Nothing. Apathy."  
  
"Oh," she paused, testing out her sentence in her head before speaking: "well I don't feel... 'nothing'."  
  
"No?"  
  
"No." A small smile flitted over his face and she found herself mirroring it. A sudden shiver gripped her and she tensed against it, shifting closer to him.  
  
"And you?"  
  
"No, me neither." He leant back slightly, his arm curving over her head and his hand coming to rest behind her. She took the hint and sighed as her head came to rest against his shoulder.  
  
Feeling his eyes on her as she closed her own, she smiled at the instinctual knowledge and the comforting warmth it gave her. She heard him take a last drag of his cigarette and flick it away and so inhaled the subtler hint of tobacco imbued in his leather.  
  
"No. This is definitely something."  
  
TBC 


	15. Re-Dawning

Okay it's finally here. Thanks for the exam luck - I'm sure it helped. :-)  
Cheers for the reviews.  
Hope it's worth the wait anyhow.  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER FOUR:  
  
Outside, the canvas of the sky was greying in patches and curling at the edges like smouldering cigarette paper, the sun's light dwindling, an amber glow melting over the horizon.  
  
The Desoto was gone from the road. He had moved it onto the drive last night and she couldn't decide whether to be happy about that particular move or not. It was more permanent, safer, a step forward. But was that what she wanted?  
  
She let the curtain drop from her grasp as she felt his cooling fingertips on the strip of exposed skin at the small of her back. His face was in her hair, inhaling her, his lips applying a light pressure against her temple and she leant back into him with a soft sigh.  
  
His hands slid under her top, planing over her waist and smoothing their way up her ribs. He whispered something into her ear and although she couldn't catch the words she shivered at the clear meaning.  
  
(Has it really been only a few days?)  
  
As warmth blossomed throughout her body from the goose-pimpled trail of his touch, she could only think in infinities. An infinite number of eternities since they had last been here, an infinite number of moments had brought them here again, an infinite number of possibilities.   
  
And here they were.   
  
And she wanted it.   
  
Nodding, she turned around in his arms.  
  
The kisses were barely that, a pressing together of slightly parted lips, the excuse to close lids whenever the searing eye contact got too much.  
  
It was all hands and bodies and legs and skin. His hands on her back, cupping her buttocks and pressing her into him; lifting her skirt and softly kneading the muscles in the back of her thighs. Her hands clutching at his shoulders, revealing more skin with each button of his shirt, reaching around his back and pulling him with her by the belt loops as she backed against the wall.   
  
The feel of his body pressing against her and the way she arched instinctively into him. His knee nudging in between hers and how her leg lifted instinctively to brace his hip. The feel of her skin against his, of him mouthing her name against her cheek, and of their eyes burning into each other. The sound of their synchronising gasps, of their ragged attempts for breath, and of:  
  
"Buffy?"  
  
Dawn's voice. (Deja vu.)  
  
They froze, locked eyes and parted forcefully, pushing off against each other and hastily fingering at their clothes. But they were only in the lounge and it only took a couple of all-to-quick seconds for Dawn to find them.  
  
"Bu- Oh." Dawn's eyes widened and a grin conquered the majority of her face. "I'm interupto girl again, it would seem."  
  
"What? Are they having sex?"  
  
(Oh no!)  
  
But there she was. Anya, all with the knowing-looks and bright smiles of delight. And then there he was. Xander, all of the beady-eyes, pursed-lips and -  
  
She couldn't help herself. The laugh bubbled forth and emerged from her in a burst of mocking giggles. "Xander, what *is* that around your neck?"  
  
Xander's hand shot to the large cross that adorned his chest and he sneered in Spike's direction. "Can't be too careful."  
  
Spike's answer was a simple smirk. A smug satisfaction coated his small movements with applied, implied ego. He straightened up and sneered as he looked Xander up and down, his face breaking out into a one-sided grin as he made his assessment and the memories returned to him.  
  
"I know, I told him he looked stupid and not-at-all manly. But that's my Xander."  
  
"Anya!"  
  
"Yes, honey?"  
  
Xander opened his mouth to protest, his vigilant gaze drifting to the evidently amused Spike once more and his cheeks turning plum for the briefest of moments. He let out an exacerbated sigh and shook his head. "Never mind."  
  
"Oh!" Anya's hand shot to her mouth with realisation. "Did I do that emasculation thing again? I'm sorry baby. I know how much you hate it when Buffy does it."  
  
"An!"  
  
"It's OK, snoogles. You're more than man enough for me."  
  
There was a derisive snort of laughter in the air and all eyes turned to Dawn and Spike, wondering which had made the sound. Anya, suddenly remembering her manners, beamed at Spike and eagerly extended a hand out to him.  
  
"Hi, I'm Anya! Xander's girlfriend, fellow 'Scooby'," she even made out the quotation marks, a difficult task with only one free hand. "Ex-Vengeance demon and shop assistant at the Magic Box - *the* place for all your occult needs. Be sure to pop in sometime."  
  
Spike's head bobbed with the rhythm of Anya enthusiastic handshaking, sucking in his cheeks in an effort not to laugh. "That's... you're really something, aren't you? Vengeance demon you say?" At Anya's affirmative response, the barely suppressed humour wavered and he said in all seriousness: "I'm sure Xander doesn't realise how lucky he is."  
  
"Oh, I remind him. Often! Sometimes three or four times a night!"  
  
Spike chuckled, finally extricating his hand from Anya's and running it through his re-styled hair. "Very lucky man indeed."   
  
His glance slipped to Buffy and her eyes fell to the carpet for a diversionary second. When she looked back up, he had settled himself on the sofa; feet kicking heavily up onto the coffee table as he lingered over the task of buttoning up his shirt.   
  
With a roll of the eyes signalling her boredom, Dawn came to sit on the opposite end of the sofa and she switched the television on with a stab of the remote. "You OK with this?"   
  
Spike shrugged with a non-committal grunt and they watched in silence.  
  
"Everything alright, Xander?" Buffy asked, succeeding in turning Xander's stare from the sofa. His eyes settled on her and after a moment the steely glare relented somewhat, but not enough.  
  
"Everything here is beyond my comprehension. But since when has that been a first?" He fixed her with a lip-curled expression so near to disgust she felt her insides squirm at it. "Come on Anya, we should be going."  
  
"But we just got here."  
  
"Anya! *Please*."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Xander, wait!" She caught him with his hand on the car door handle and he turned to her with a dramatic sigh.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Thank you... for bringing Dawn back safe."  
  
He nodded and even produced a thin smile but then his hand was on the door handle again.  
  
"Xander, don't be like this." She pleaded with him.  
  
"Like what? Like I *have* an iota of common sense?" He was glaring now, his eyes jutting out of their sockets and pointing at her like accusing daggers.  
  
"I don't think she means that, Xander."   
  
Buffy's eyes turned to Anya with her mouth open ready to protest at the interruption. But then Anya continued, still with her trademarked literal tone. "I think she means how insensitive and unsympathetic you're being."  
  
Buffy's eyes widened in amazement and gratitude at Anya, who simply shrugged.  
  
"Oh, it's not like I don't see his faults, I *do*. I just love him all the more for having them." She beamed brightly and stroked Xander's arm with reassuring affection.  
  
It did the trick. The defences came down with a shy shrug being offered as a gesture of surrender, a wan smile curving at his lips. (There he is!)  
  
"I'll love you whatever you do, Buffy. *Whoever* you do." He confirmed his words by drawing her into a short but comforting hug and whispering: "Just be careful."  
  
She smiled, remembering Willow's almost exact words.  
  
"I will."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"A wall?"  
  
"A very *angry* wall."  
  
"I don't believe you."  
  
"Believe what you like. I don't care."  
  
"Believe what?" Buffy asked, wondering what she had walked in on.  
  
"Spike says he got his black-eye from an 'angry wall'!" Dawn rolled her eyes. "Talk about lame."  
  
(Black-eye?) Her eyes shot to Spike and there it was. A grey sprawl of a bruise where she had hit his eye last night. She didn't know how but she hadn't seen it since last night. She'd forgotten it, looked past it (ignored it).  
  
"Who you calling lame?"  
  
"You."  
  
Spike glowered at Dawn and a low growl of irritation gurgling in his throat, causing Buffy to marvel at Dawn's talent for causing frustration. She smiled to herself decided to stick to the role of an onlooker as the scene continued to play out.  
  
"So let's get this straight. You, with the enhanced-Vampire senses, just walked right into a wall?"  
  
Spike's eyes glinted and his mouth twisted wryly as he looked up at Buffy. "Yep, straight into it, with my eyes wide open."  
  
She smiled and so did he. It was one of those things that could have been defined as a 'moment' if it had lasted longer. But then he was standing up, walking out into the hall and putting his coat on. She followed him, her brow furrowed with the question she didn't need to voice.  
  
"Don't worry, just going for a walk." He shrugged into his duster. "You should spend some time with Dawn. Do the sisterly-bonding bit."  
  
The moment his hand contacted with the door handle, a thought struck her and she spoke before she could stop herself. "You won't -?"  
  
"No." He smiled and smoothed away the worry lines on her forehead with a fingertip before pulling her into a deep, rough kiss that left her glassy-eyed and breathless. "See you soon."  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
She watched the breeze of black disappear, feeling an involuntary shiver as the door as the door clicked to, and turned back to the lounge.  
  
(Dawn.)  
  
"You do realise I'm gonna need therapy after what I've just been through." Her sister emerged from the kitchen with a plateful of cookies and a glass of milk, a slight smirk playing on her lips.  
  
"Yeah, I know it's been difficult on you, Dawn. But Glory's been held off now... at least for a while."  
  
Dawn shook her head, gulping down her mouthful of cookie. "No, not Glory. I'm mean after witnessing that little 'Welcome Home' display."  
  
Buffy cringed, her insides curling in on themselves with embarrassment. "Er, yeah... sorry about that."  
  
"I'm talking *years* of psycho-analysis to get over that one."  
  
"Years?"  
  
"It's emotionally scarring, like thinking about your parents -"  
  
"Don't go there."  
  
"Exactly! You see?" Dawn's eyes were wide with mirth. It was a great sight to see. "You're not supposed to think about your family like that."  
  
(Family.) Buffy smiled and helped herself to a cookie as they walked into the lounge.  
  
"But if we're talking scale here, then maybe it wasn't as bad as you and Riley. I used to get a crick in my neck just looking at you two."  
  
"So, let me get this straight. On a purely height basis, you don't object to him?"  
  
"Oh, I object... that's my job." Dawn grinned and Buffy felt her own cheek muscles pull back of their own accord.  
  
"Could I get a hug, Dawn?"  
  
Dawn paused a moment, almost surprised at the request, but she relinquished her snacks to the coffee table and walked into her sister's arms.  
  
"It's good to have you home."  
  
Buffy felt Dawn shrug and mumble. "it's good to be home."  
  
Buffy smiled and sighed into the embrace, feeling a calm crawl and linger through her veins. A pacifying, neutralising effect settled within her and she let the relief come, let Dawn earth her, let herself come home.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
It was saccharine over-kill. So sugary-sappy that it stung at eyes that would be crying right now if she was 15 and could comply with the blatant director manipulation. The inevitability, the trite happy ending - a sweeping score that reached its zenith as the oh-so-right-for-each-other lovers came together in what amounted to no more than an anti-climatic, almost chaste peck of lips.  
  
"Oh my God, I suddenly feel very sick."  
  
Buffy smiled wryly at her sister, who despite being 15, also appeared quite immune to the movie's charms. "You getting cynical in your old age, Dawn?"  
  
"Not cynical, just... rational..." She drifted off, as if she knew how wrong the word had sounded coming from her lips without Buffy's guffaw of a response.  
  
"You? Rational?"  
  
"What? It could happen."  
  
"Yeah, given an infinity or two."  
  
Dawn shrugged, her lips pursing but stopping just short of a pout. "Well, I have a few millennia on you, so you can't judge... or does having an older boyfriend give you a free pass to mature-land?"  
  
Buffy opened her mouth to retaliate, only to stop and consider Dawn's words, or rather one word in particular. She glanced at Dawn and mouthed the word to her before vocalising it with a whisper. "He's my 'boyfriend'."  
  
"Well, uh-huh, it certainly looked that way to me."  
  
"My -"  
  
Her repetition was interrupted as the front door opened. The sisters looked at each other in puzzlement for an instant before remembering. A smile broke free on Dawn's face for a split second before she put it into check and re-applied her teen trademarked nonchalance. Just in time as a black form glided into the room and collapsed bonelessly into the armchair.  
  
"Nice walk?"  
  
He nodded vaguely, his brows furrowing. "Took a tour of good old Sunny-Hell, reacquainted myself with Willie. Wrapped it up with a turn past the High School that... is no more. What the hell happened there?"  
  
Buffy smiled, her mind drifting back to something he had told her, a revelation he had bit out in angry frustration.   
  
"Big snake!" Her grin widened as she spoke and watched the words dawn on him.  
  
  
  
TBC 


	16. Moonlight and SpringTide

- Okay, I've been in an odd mood these past couple of days and I'm not sure whether it's of the good or not where my writing's concerned, so let me know.  
- Thanks for the reviews :-)  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER FIVE  
  
She liked these spring nights most. When the air carried only the slightest reminder of winter chills. It had enveloped her the moment she stepped outside, a soft yawn of awakening life and stirring growth marking the end of the winter hiatus. The one thing that disturbed her was the prospect of soon being unable to indulge her coat fetish. (Maybe thin denim jackets.)  
  
A slight breeze barely disturbed her hair as they sat out on the back garden and she watched him smoke a cigarette. For some reason he hadn't seemed to like the idea of the perfectly amenable garden bench and had silently dropped out of her line of vision to sit cross-legged on the lawn.   
  
She reasoned that perhaps he wanted to be closer to the ground. Needed to be earthed by the soft grass. She found herself wondered, as she settled down next to him, if in all of his generations of travel he had ever settled, ever had a home; or if, like cows in a field, once the munchies depleted, there always came a time to move on to pastures new. Despite her internal cringe as her mind tacked up a gallery of psychedelic snapshots of his bloody past, she found herself wondering if he could ever call this his home, whether he ever had. Sunnydale, this house, this plot of ground, her.   
  
"So these men in white coats... were some kind of government scientists?"  
  
She nodded. "Yep, big military-style operation. These fatigued-up soldiers would round up demons and take them to this straight-out-of-a-Bond-movie underground lair where they were prodded and poked about. If they were really lucky, their parts were amputated and used to make this super Frankenstein's monster... *thing* called Adam, who lived up to his name by rebelling against his creator and planning demon versus human Armageddon."  
  
He was visibly disturbed. His eyebrows pushing together, his mouth gaping open as his head dipping further forward with every word. He took a deep breath and shook his head to set his features back to neutral. "Really glad *I* wasn't around then."  
  
"No. You might have ended up with some nasty bit of silicon in your head."  
  
The puzzlement was back, his brows pushed forward again, but this time his mouth twisted around his cigarette. "Silicon? In my head?" He spoke through exhaled plumes of blue smoke.  
  
She grinned at his renewed consternation. "They were big into behaviour modification devices."  
  
"Behav-? They're not still around, are they?"  
  
"No," she whispered thinking of Riley leaving in a hail of chopper blades. (Couldn't get away fast enough.)  
  
The corners of his mouth lifted a lifted, but the smile was in his eyes and she shrugged and looked away, her eyes sweeping over the expanse of lawn and back to him.  
  
She liked him best on these nights, when the moon was full and low in sky, his pale skin luminescent as it absorbed and reflected the cool ethereal light. She studied the silvery highlights of his profile, a slight twist of curiosity turning in her every time he lifted the filter of his cigarette to his lips. After a few moments under the spotlight of her scrutiny, he looked at her, the question was in his eyes before he spoke.  
  
"What?"  
  
"I was kinda wondering... what's that like?" Her eyes motioned towards the cigarette and he followed her gaze, shrugged and handed it to her.  
  
"Here."  
  
She glanced at him apprehensively as she took it awkwardly between her fingers. Turning it over and examining it like an unusual nick-knack on a bric-a-brac stall.  
  
"Just don't overdo it on the first drag."  
  
Her lips curled a bit at that and she smiled at him as she fixed her gaze on the orange glare at the tip of the cigarette as she brought it to her own lips and drew on the filter.  
  
She felt the smoke collect at the back of her throat and stain her tongue as she inhaled slowly, her brows knitting at the strange discomfort of it filling her lungs, and then -  
  
"Oh God!" She coughed out, her free hand gripping at her head, as a sensation she could only suppose compared to a lick of liquid nitrogen stretched across the surface of her brain. It was almost painful, the nicotine stimulating her nerves with tingles and pinpricks of icy sensation. "I don't think I'll be having any more of those." She opened her eyes to see him smirking at her as she handed him the cigarette back, realising that her fingers were going numb. (No definitely don't want the numbness again.)  
  
"Is it always like that?"  
  
He shook his head, smirk wavering. "No, some things are better the first time." A hint of playful innuendo danced in his eyes as he smiled at her. "Other things get better with practise."  
  
She returned the smile, arching her eyebrow at the inference to what was now inevitable between them again.  
  
"I can't feel my lips." She said, pressing her fingers to them for emphasis. It has the desired effect for he leaned in and pressed his mouth against hers, bringing sensation back to her face with a warm blush.  
  
"No loss. Smoking's evil. Din't anyone ever tell you that?"  
  
She snorted, her tongue pushing against her teeth. "Oh yeah... *that*. All the evil people smoke, wear black," she eyed the uniform he had reverted to, "and go 'Grr'." She made a snarly face and he mirrored it with a clawed hand.  
  
They shared a laugh and it felt good for a few all-too-short seconds but a bitter guilt impeded upon them and they both reeled off with a weary sigh, silence threatening to re-establish the distinction between them.  
  
"My counsellor smoked. He wasn't evil."  
  
"All counsellors are evil." He punctuated his dismissive statement by flicking away the butt of their shared cigarette.  
  
She frowned, following his litter trail. (I really need to pick that up... tomorrow.) "Can we say 'negative categorisation'?"  
  
"You should know all about that." He said with an accusatory quirk of his eyebrows. "It's all that 'tell me about your relationship with your father' crap. They're the biggest perverts of the lot of you."  
  
There was that distinction. The 'lot of you' as opposed to his 'lot', the 'you' as opposed to him. The problem with distinction was that it meant distance. She felt a need to disagree with him. "Actually, mine was more: 'Tell me about your relationship with Angel', but in a real round-about way. All metaphor and generalisations, you know?"  
  
"See what I mean? Evil." He didn't look at her and his countenance shifted and stiffened. It took a second for her to realise why. She couldn't help the one-sided smile tugged at her lips as it struck her. (Angel.)  
  
She was about to make some kind of comment, tease him about it, but something stopped her. The sigh he heaved, so weighty he almost exhaled himself. He sagged forward, his knees drawing up as rests for his elbows as he cradled his head in his hands and stared at the grass, through the grass. (Drusilla.)  
  
"You're missing her." She didn't need to question what was obvious but he still nodded, his head dipping so he could run his fingers through his hair. He emitted a short groan at the oblivious stalks of resilient evergreen that would recover almost instantly from the smothering pressure of his form.  
  
Her eyes looked forward and she gazed down the length of the garden, trying to give herself a sense of perspective, but not distance. "It's okay," she began her voice no more than a breath. "Sometimes... sometimes it seems that all I do is miss people. That it's all I am."  
  
She felt him turn to look at her, felt him understand her and closed her eyes just as she felt his fingers on her cheek. She leant into his touch, turning and completing the circuit by making eye contact as she cupped his cheek.  
  
It was a shuffle for closeness then, until she was sat in between his legs, her feet at either side of his hips and his knees behind her shoulders. Until both of her hands were on his face, until their lips met.  
  
She realised that she was shaking. Not with chill but with the fear that came with the realisation that this was it, that there was no going back, and that she wanted and needed it more than anything, more than anyone. The unsteady, quivering contact of lips steadied as passion warmed and quelled her somewhat. The shivers were now simply means of transmuting her body, readying her, and every tingly trail had the same pulsating destination.  
  
She thought that maybe she tasted the same as him. That it was that drag of his cigarette and the ingrained remnant of tobacco on her tongue, but no. It was more than that. She recognised something of herself in his kiss and knew that the instinct was mutual. It was grief and loss and longing and desire all intermingled and delicious. A silent flint of something deep and inherent flickered through her mind only to dissipate into the melee of sensation clawing and swarming, invading and obliterating all thought.  
  
The moan that escaped from her as he reached round her back and pressed her body against was eagerly swallowed up by his mouth and taken for the signal it was. The signal for their kiss to deepen, the assent for clothes to be peeled away, the wordless acknowledgement of their mutual need for more contact, for complete contact.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
He stared at her, his eyes wide with something that almost resembled horror. No, that *was* horror. A familiar thought revisited her in the tail of a shooting star streaming and fading across her mind's eye. (This should not be happening.) She stared back, her eyes just as uncomprehending, just as unblinking.  
  
His hand came up to her face, a finger softly traced the edge of cheek and the line of her jaw, coming to a stop at the centre of her chin and still the eye contact remained unbroken.  
  
It remained unbroken even when his hand clasped at her mouth, expertly cutting off her air supply and solid in its attempt for suffocation. Shadows shifted in his eyes and she was mesmerised by the changes, by the hardening of his gaze. His jaw clenched with angry effort and still she held his stare, unwavering, unyielding.  
  
Just as her body drowned with panic and the drive for self-preservation kicked in, kinetic potential for the fight surging through her limbs with the pulse of the convulsing of her chest; he released his hold. Allowing her a few deep gasps of recovery he suffocated her once again, this time with desperate, deep kisses that threatened to delve down into her and plunder her essence.  
  
And she reciprocated, just as desperately, just as greedily. Their eyes clamped shut against the confusion and the unbidden, unwanted questions that had formed out of the ebb and flow of the afterglow, or even way before that. Now was not the time for words.  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
He chased her up the stairs, swatting at her bare ass and grinning when she turned her head to glare at him. Their feet were light and stealthy as they ran on the balls of their feet. Their ascent soundless as they repressed squeals and yelps, pausing at the top of the stairs, checking for the all-clear and bursting through the hall into her room.   
  
Bundles of clothes were rejected into forlorn piles at the foot of her bed and she stopped before climbing into bed, turning to watch his slow stalk up to her. His eyes had the full diurnal spectrum of blues and were now staring at her with the same darkest midnight of the night sky beyond the blankets that covered the window.  
  
As he neared her she caught his scent and her brow furrowed at the unexpected elements she met with. All his signature notes were there: the cigarettes, the evaporated fumes of the alcohol he had consumed at Willie's, and the faint sheen of musk that coated his body after sex. But he also smelled of grass, of coffee and of the popcorn Dawn had thrown at him to shut him up. He smelled like home.  
  
"What?" He was in front of her now, his body inches from hers and the gentle rhythm of her breathing began to syncopate, her heartbeat becoming more audible and insistent as she reached out to him.  
  
She shook her head, a wry smile playing at her lips.   
  
(No. No words.)  
  
  
TBC 


	17. Spheres of Time

Thanks for the lovely feedback - I swear my head has swelled in the last few days...but then that could just be my new haircut.  
Okay, enough with the crap jokes and on with the story, in which there may be one or two more crap jokes... oh dear.  
  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER SIX  
  
"You can stop that anytime soon."  
  
"But -"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Okay, what's wrong?" Buffy was shook from of her sandwich making zone-out and turned around to her sister and her... She took in their demeanours, one pouty and a moment away from flouncing around the kitchen in sulky protest; the other stiff and unyielding, his arms crossed over his chest and his back firmly rooted against the wall.  
  
(Could this be the strangest get-Dawn-ready-for-school morning ever?)  
  
"Your sister seems to have confused me with a bleeding agony aunt." He fixed his glare on Buffy, waving an accusatory arm at the offending girl.  
  
"What?" Dawn complained in her high pitched, it's-*so*-not-fair voice. "He's a guy. I needed the point of view of a non-Xander guy-type person."  
  
"What's wrong with Xander?"  
  
"Yeah, Xander would make a great agony aunt. He's half way there already -- all he need's a frilly blouse."  
  
"Shut up, Spike."  
  
Dawn shrugged and made a noise somewhere between a huff and a snort. "He's great, just all... uncle-y."  
  
"Sounds perfect. Why don't you go bother him?"  
  
"Spike." Buffy drew the name out slowly, marking it as the second warning it was. He eyed the butter knife she was gripping and turning as so to catch light enough to match the glint in her eye. Shrugging and reproducing Dawn's huff-snort almost perfectly, he fell back against the wall.  
  
"It's just that Kevin -"  
  
"You were asking for *Spike's* advice on *boys*?!" Buffy's eyes were wide with incredulity and her voice a strained chord of uneasiness. (Not the boy thing. Please tell me I don't have to give her The Talk any time soon.)  
  
Dawn froze, as if caught with her hand in the cookie jar, only for defiance to creep back into her eyes. She folded her arms and bounced into an asymmetrical stance. "Yeah. And?"  
  
"Well -"  
  
"You are far too young to be getting fuzzy feelings."  
  
(What the -)  
  
Buffy, still open mouthed from being cut off, turned to stare at Spike. She was about to tell him shut up once more, but was instead cut off by Dawn.  
  
"Buffy wasn't much older than me when she met Angel."  
  
He blinked back a flinch at the name, but was not deterred, his lips curling with satisfaction as he scored the winning point. "And look how that turned out."  
  
"I... hate you." Dawn stormed, long hair billowing out behind her like a smoky trail.  
  
"And I don't care." Spike said to no-one in particular, simply fulfilling a petulant need to get the last word in.  
  
The room hung suspended for half a moment, as if a Drama had finished and the players were a-waiting applause.  
  
"Wow! You really have an effect on people, don't you?"  
  
He looked up at her, smirk in full play and eyes gleaming. "I have an effect on you." Sidling up to her, his head bowed and hooded eyes bored into her as he advanced. It was all too reminiscent of the previous night and her breath hitched as he made contact with her flesh, his fingers reaching under her shirt and splaying out over her abdomen.  
  
"What?"  
  
She repeated the words that had got caught in her suddenly constricted throat. "This is not a good effect."  
  
"No?" His hand glided its way over her hip as he moved in closer. His breath cool and shiver inducing as he blew against the scars on her neck that burned at his proximity. She gasped and clutched at him, grabbing a handful of his shirt and pulling his lips to hers.   
  
"Eww!"  
  
There was no more panicked separation, just a glide apart and a sigh or two.   
  
"That's a pretty nasty habit you're developing there, Bit."  
  
"Not my fault." Dawn said, her lips pressing together and forming a stubborn line as she marched up to the sideboard. "You could at least wait until I'm *out* of the house before jumping each other's bones."  
  
"Dawn!"  
  
"What?"  
  
The sound of him chuckling behind her distracted Buffy from her berating of Dawn, she sighed and packed up the sandwich in a paper bag. Bending over to the fruit bowl and picking up a red and green apple, she held it up to her sister. "I'm guessing this is too much to hope for?"  
  
Dawn shrugged, her nose wrinkling in consideration. "It's not entirely green."  
  
"So we could just eat the red bits?"  
  
That earned her a grin. "Whatever. Put it in -- but I'm not promising anything."  
  
Buffy smiled and let the apple drop in to the bag with a rustle-y crunch that was so strangely satisfying, she conceded to the need to give it a light shake for good measure. "Have a good day at school."  
  
"That'll be the day. Bye, Buffy." There was that huff-snort again that this time passed for a 'goodbye' to Spike as Dawn spun on her heel, her hair fanning out around her like the cascading sweep of a carousel. In a few strides she had cleared the kitchen and was heading for the door.  
  
Buffy waited for the click to of the door and turned to Spike. "You really don't like her, do you?"  
  
He snorted and the corners of his mouth twitched. "She's insufferable."  
  
"Kinda like you then."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"Insatiable!"  
  
"And you're complaining?"  
  
He made a show of trying to peer past her. "Well I was just try'na watch telly, Love..."  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes. "You and your square-eyes." She made a reluctant move to get off him, only for him to snatch her wrists in his hands to hold her.  
  
"I can catch the repeats."  
  
She grinned and closed the distance between their mouths.  
  
"Oh... *bloody* hell!" He ground out in frustration, a rush of air storming through his nose. "Ignore it."  
  
"I can't... it could be an apocalypse."  
  
"Yeah, 'cos apocalypses just come a-knocking at your door."  
  
"They do, if you're me." She gave him a crooked smile as she climbed off of him and headed for the door.  
  
"Will?!"  
  
"Yeah, it's me." Willow said, as if anyone could be left in any doubt after taking in the red hair and the tiny wave.  
  
"Hey you. Wanna come in?"  
  
Willow paused up on her tiptoes, newly conscious that she had been trying to peek into the house. "Uh, sure. I have something I think you're gonna like." She breezed through the door in haze of lavender and jasmine and something Buffy couldn't place.  
  
Buffy indicated to the lounge and watched as Willow entered and her body abruptly stiffened as she came upon Spike. "Uh-oh...Hi!" The wave was this time a stiff-armed parody of a traffic-police officer's signal to stop.  
  
"Hello, yourself."  
  
"Say... you look less bruised."  
  
"Uh, yeah..." Spike managed to exhibit only a vague level of visible discomfort; his elbows digging into the armrests of the armchair he had made his own. "Suppose I have you to thank for my swifty recovery."  
  
Willow shrugged, modesty claiming her voice.  
  
The three were encapsulated in a frozen bubble of a pause. Like a muted advert break there was picture but no sound. Willow nodded several times and Spike glanced at Buffy for an instant until, the picture of nonchalance, his attention reverted to the television. Buffy stared from one to the other, finally pointing out the couch to Willow and sitting down next to her.  
  
"Will! You said you have news?"  
  
Willow seized upon her cue with eye-widening zeal. "Yes! News!" She held up the velvet bag she had in her grasp. Out of which she produced a crystal ball. It was something of an anti-climax.  
  
"I thought you hated that witchy cliché?"  
  
Willow shrugged, the ball managing to stay balanced on her upturned palm. "They have their uses."  
  
On closer inspection Buffy noted a swarm of purple mist undulating within the globe. "And this one is...?"  
  
"It's a fa-" she stopped herself, as if knowing the name would be lost on Buffy. "We're not quite sure if it works yet."  
  
"Why, what is it supposed to do?"  
  
"Act kinda like an alarm clock."  
  
Buffy's nose crinkled as she took the glass ball from Willow's proffering hand. "Thanks, my other one broke... keeps getting stuck at seven-thirty. So how does this thing work exactly?" She lifted it and glanced up at underside.  
  
"I don't think she means *that* kind of alarm clock, you daft wench."  
  
"Hey!" Buffy shot Spike a glare.  
  
"Well it's not," his eyes settled to Willow, "is it?"  
  
Willow shook her head. "No, he's right... it's like a warning device."  
  
"Warning...?" She drifted off, all enthusiasm draining from her like electricity conducting through wood. (Of course, how could I forget?) "Glory," she sighed and put the ball aside.  
  
"Just to be on the safe side, you know." Willow's hand was delving around in the velvet again and Buffy dreaded whatever she was going to pull out of the bag next. "Which is why Anya thought you should have this."  
  
"The -" she was stumped for the name.  
  
"Dagonsphere. The only thing we know that repels Glory."  
  
"It's never over is it?" Buffy's eyes descended to the carpet.  
  
Willow's expression faltered and faded altogether, her eyes flooding with concern. "Buffy, these are just safeguards... I-it just seems to be that the bads are always one step ahead of us, a-and now, with so much at stake..." she paused, her gaze flitting with a subconscious tendency to Spike. "We'd all feel better knowing you're safe."  
  
The sentiment behind the words sprinkled like icing sugar over Buffy and she forced a smile that withered as Spike chose that moment to choke up a bitter sound of irritation. She lifted her eyes to meet his and he didn't need to say anything more.  
  
"His 'akcur'" she imitated the sound with a magician's 'duh-der' gesture of her hands, "may have had a point. If Glory gets back to me, I'm supposed to fight her off with a glowy sphere and a glorified snow globe?"  
  
"Always thought you had some balls for a girl." Spike said with a classic, irking smirk.  
  
"*So* not funny." She glowered at him. Clenching her teeth to hide her smile she threw a cushion at him, a sense of gratification brewing from his muffled protest and pouting scowl. She turned her attention back to Willow.  
  
"Okay, Wills, give me the techs."  
  
-  
-  
-  
-  
  
"No, I feel better about this now. And I'm thinking these things will make wicked-cool ornaments. Her eyes flitted to the mantle over the fire. "Much better than that yucky urn anyhow."  
  
"I'm glad." Willow beamed full-force. Her body twisted into a stretch and she pushed her arms out, stopping when her eyes fell on Spike. "I guess we should get a few things straight." She spoke soft and serious and Buffy's heartbeat wavered as she did a double take.   
  
"I don't like you and I have good reasons not to, what with the kidnapping-bottle-in-face-and-threatening-to-kill-Xander thing. But Buffy seems to like having you around, so that means I have to kinda like it too.  
  
"For some reason, you being here seems to make for a whole-lot-smilier Buffy that I kinda like seeing. So if that means you sticking around, then that's the way it has to be."  
  
"Will -" Buffy croaked.  
  
"No! Don't interrupt me, I'm on a roll here." She bristled and with a roll of her shoulders, straightened her back, turning her attention back to a dumbfounded Spike. That was when Buffy decided she could enjoy this after all.  
  
"Right where was I? Oh, yes. This is the part where I say something like: If you hurt her, I'll kill you. Well okay then, if you *do* hurt her, I *will* kill you. Don't look at me like that, I'm pretty nifty with a number two pencil, as it happens... Basically I don't have to like you o-or even like that Buffy likes you, but I like Buffy. You understand me?"  
  
Silence inhaled and it's expanded lungs filled and sealed the room for an infinity or eternity, Buffy couldn't decide. She glanced from Willow to Spike just at the moment his gaping mouth closed and remoulded into a smirk.  
  
"Completely." He nodded with complete confidence and turned back to the television.  
  
"Well then, my work here is done." Willow smiled with quiet satisfaction and set about collecting her things.  
  
"You going?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Yeah. I have a whole *heap* of things I have to do to Tara -- uh," She froze a deep pink blush flourishing in her cheeks that Spike was taking far too much of an unhealthy interest in. "I mean *with* Tara -- no, that's not much better... uh, bye then."  
  
In a flurry of motion she was gone. Spike stared after her for a moment, an expression of longing shaping and softening his features. He finally turned back to find Buffy with crossed arms and raised eyebrows.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You! Checking out my friend's blood circulation."  
  
He smiled, willing to play along. "I'm a cold-blooded Vampire, I can't help it."  
  
The twisting of her lips lifted into a smile.  
  
"Don't worry, Love. I wouldn't want that when..."   
  
He leered at her in a way that initiated a warming chill that fizzled throughout her body. She opened her mouth to reply with something as audacious and inane, only to stop and consider his words. She stared at him, her brow furrowing with the realised implications.  
  
"Then why... *this*," she indicated the air between them, "when you must want..."  
  
He shrugged. "I'll take whatever you can give me."  
  
  
TBC 


	18. Thursday's Child?

  
**PART TWO**  
CHAPTER SEVEN 

She caught a flash of the metallic silver object out of the corner of her eye and her senses fixed upon it, turning over in bed so that she didn't have to twist her neck.

"I hope you're not planning on smoking in here."

He shook his head, a wavering expression flitting across his features as he clicked the lighter open igniting a flare of light that masked his bone structure with an amber glow.

Her expression hardened with concentration, a faint nag of concern straightening her back as she wrapped the sheet round herself and sat up. She stared at the hand that hovered only just within minimum-safe-distance of the shivering flame. "What are you -?"

Another shake of his head silenced her once more and her attention returned to the fire, ready to intercede should the element's nature remember Spike's nature. Silence danced within the flickering blue heart of the flame and she was transfixed.

After an eternity or two had been consumed and burnt out by the fire, the lighter snapped to extinguishing the flare and jolting her back into awareness. She glanced up to eyes that that still held the flame's blue heat and was once more captivated. So absorbed that she didn't register his first touch until his hand moved up past her knee. Looking down with furrowed brows, it was a moment before she realised what was different.

"Warm?" His hand had retained the fire's heat. (Not -) Meeting his eyes again she shook her head. "I warm you."

An acknowledging smile crossed his lips as he leant in to kiss her. "That you do."

She gasped as his naturally cool hand met her body the instant his lips brushed hers.

-

-

-

-

"Ugh!"

"Bad day?" Buffy followed Dawn into the kitchen and spoke to her sister's back, watching as she headed straight for the fridge to load up on and sugar.

Dawn shrugged, cradling her selection snacks up to the island and off-loading them into a heap for further contemplation. "Was okay. If it was bad you'd _really_ know about it." 

"Just so long as you're okay."

Dawn glanced up from her perusal. "How can I not be when I have all these munchies?"

Buffy smiled, coming forward to examine the food (if you can call it that). "Think I went overboard with the shopping?"

"No, not overboard. -- More like you drowned in the keeping-greedy-teenagers-happy aisle."

(Happy?)

Buffy glanced up from the ingredients listing she was reading and mirrored Dawn's grin. "This is just a big pile of E numbers isn't it?"

"Uh-huh... and your point is?"

"I have no point." Buffy shrugged. "I am point-less."

"Well you said it." Spike drawled, ignoring Buffy's glare and converging on the pile. "Hmm. Peanut butter."

"Hey! I want that."

"Tough."

Dawn's lip jutted out in a full-blown pout as she lunged for the jar only for Spike to take a step back. "You're evil."

Spike nodded with a strangely familiar glint in his eyes. "Yep." He forced the airtight lid with ease and dipped a finger in for an ample helping of the gooey substance. "There you go."

"Eww... I don't want it now your freaky undead fingers have been in it."

"He'll get you some more, Dawn." She turned and fixed her eyes on a gaping Spike, cutting off any attempt of argument. "_Won't_ you, Spike?"

He produced another of Dawn's patented grunts and set to licking the peanut butter off his finger. Buffy turned away as a flush of heat rose up her neck and burned her cheeks.

"Good."

"Good." Dawn repeated for emphasis. Crossing her arms and smugness in full flow, she glared at Spike.

He paused and blinked, finally recovering his smirk as he swallowed his mouthful. "Still evil."

-

-

-

-

A bitter breeze nipped at her face as she stepped out on to the step slamming the door behind her. (So much for spring.) She wrapped the flaps of her coat closer around herself and exhaled her frustrations into the wind. Hearing the door open and close behind her, she smiled.

"You okay?" She heard him ask.

She nodded. "Am now."

"It's just—he's only..."

Feeling the by now familiar twist of instinct turn in her as he stepped up behind her, she leant against him. "I know... Xander was just being Xander." She forced a smile and looked back at him. "But I don't want to think about him -"

"Understandable."

"Hey!" She turned in his arms and curled her hands round the lapels of his duster, smiling at the feel of the soft leather under her touch. "He's my friend... he may be an ass sometimes, but he's still my friend. Okay?"

He held her stare, one side of his mouth lifting. "Okay, there will be no bad-mouthing of the baby-sitting ass." 

Buffy rolled her eyes, catching a subtle change in his expression she questioned him: "What?"

Averting her stare, he shrugged. "You think... Dawn --?"

"Will be okay... Glory can't come near with the - are you worring about my sister's safety there?"

"What? No, I --"

"Good -- 'cos that's my job."

She relaxed her fingers until her grasp of leather fell away to handfuls of intangible air. An impulse flitted across her mind's eye in a pulsing strobe of light and she clutched at him again, gripping his leather in tight fists as she tugged him into a kiss.

"I like this coat." She breathed as they parted, her palms smoothing it out along his shoulders. "Where'd you get it from?"

An abrupt choke of a laugh caused her to look up at him again. He shook his head. "...Off the last Slayer I killed."

His gaze didn't avert, he was gauging her reaction. She nodded, releasing the instant tension from her muscles and the breath that plugged her lungs with a slow, controlled exhale. "Oh."

"Yeah... 'oh'."

Silence danced at their feet, mocking her from its short perspective. She flicked it away with a shake of her foot as she turned to head down the steps. "Come on, we'd better be going." She kept her stride short until he appeared beside her.

"Where you taking me anyhow?"

She smiled as she looked at him, picking up speed and noting the ease with which he kept up with her. "You'll see."

-

-

-

-

"What is this place?"

Buffy watched him turn about the spot, taking in the new environment. "My training room."

He nodded, his lower lip jutting out in appraisal. "I'm impressed."

"Giles was saying I need to get back to training. It's been a while -- ever since..." she trailed off, not needing to say any more.

"Yeah." He reached out and smoothed a loose strand of hair behind her ear before completing one more circuit, taking in the weapons on the wall and the dummy Xander made. "It's nice and all, but what the hell am I doing here?"

She shrugged, letting her arms loll at her sides as she ambled an arc around him. "I kinda thought we could..." looking at him, she grinned at his skewed stance and raised eyebrow, "train."

"Train?"

"Yeah, you know, get with the..." she punched the air in front of her and opened her hands out to carry the gesture over to him.

"You want me to _fight_ you?" His hands were in his pockets as he rocked back in his boots, a quiver of a grin betraying his attempt at incredulity.

"Well, duh! Give the boy a gold star. - You did promise."

His brow furrowed and his gaze turned to the ceiling in confusion. "When?"

"When I was drunk, that first night... You said you'd 'humour' me."

He laughed, his tongue pushing one concave cheek out. "I'm pretty sure there was a '_maybe_' in there somewhere."

"Maybe, schmaybe." She cringed but transformed it quickly into a smirk, continuing her meander around him until he had to crane his neck to see her. "You gonna disappoint me? You gone all... _soft_ on me?"

His face clouded at her words and the memory they incited. (It's working.)

"Did I tell you lately just how unbelievably _annoying_ you are?"

She rolled her shoulders as she began bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I am kinda unbelievable aren't I?"

"One of a kind."

A sensation rippled through her body, following the path of his eyes as he looked her up and down and she looked away to hide her smile. "Shame the same can't be said for you."

He flinched, his eyes jerking back up to hers and darkening as they took in her expression. "What?"

"You heard me." She sighed and examined her nails half-heartedly (so in need of a manicure). "There's nothing that makes you different from Vampires I slay every night of week. You've just got some delusions of grandeur 'cos you got lucky with a couple of Slayers -"

"More than a couple."

She ignored him, didn't look at him as she continued. "You're nothing special. The only reason I let you live as long as I did was because I. Felt. Sorry. For you."

His eyes flared as he glared at her, his arms crossing and his gaze narrowing into a keen squint.

(Gotchya.)

"That what you really think... that all this is? Just pity?"

She stopped walking and aligned her body with his, mirroring his stance. "That's entirely what this is.-- But hey - it's mutual, right?"

The flash of hurt that sprinted across his features pulled at her gut, but she ignored it, straightening her back. When she lifted her head the slate of his features had been cleared and chalked with anger.

"I don't believe you." His voice was a shadowy whisper of his usual tone and she had to strain to hear him.

"No?" She smirked at him, opening her arms out into a wide shrug. "Then do something about it... show me what makes _you_ different - Come on Spike. Humour me."

Her vision red-blacked with the impact, a surge of hot pain flaring the whole left side of her face. (Deja vu.) She touched at her cheek, checking for blood as she righted herself back into balance. A laugh fluttered out of her throat as she settled into fighting stance and looked up to see his startled features.

Just as he opened his mouth to speak she dealt the retaliating blow to his jaw. She smirked as his head snapped back with the force and righted to reveal his game face.

"That's more like it."

-

-

-

-

"Getting tired, Slayer?" He purred as he advanced on her, blood dripping from his re-broken nose and a cut above his eye.

"Not likely. I can keep going all night."

His jaw pushed forward as his tongue pushed against his lower teeth. (Another smirk - maybe I should start cataloging them.)

"Oh, I know that, Slayer."

She wiped the smug grin with another punch. "Shut up."

-

-

-

-

Somewhere along the line it disintegrated. Somewhere along the line they'd started throwing punches and kicks with the intention to miss. Every now and then he would catch her fist and their fingers and eyes would instinctively interlock until they pushed away from each other with appalled moans of protest. Every now and again floorings and subsequent straddled attempts for dominance had only led to much rolling, grunting and pathetic struggles that were less about harm and more about contact.

The problem was that they had crossed the line.

She went down with a sigh that resounded into a groan from the impacts of the matted floor and his weight crashing down onto her. Hands that should have fought him off clutched at him as he lunged for her neck. She gasped and braced herself, feeling a familiar pressure against her thigh she smiled and twisted her head to extend her neck -

They froze.

Cringing as she felt his biceps contract under her grasp, she reluctantly turned to face the head that was lifting with excruciatingly slow progress to reveal questioning yellow eyes. Silence more than made up for its earlier dismissal, proudly pantomiming despite the lack of audience participation.

(Behind you.)

A nervous burst of laughter emerged from her constricted throat, the sound ricocheting around the few centimetres of space separating them, but nothing was released. The air pressurised, the atmosphere condensed, and she struggled for air as they exchanged the same breaths. 

She stared up at him, her eyes flickering across his face to take in the harsh lines of his game face, the feral yellow eyes, the dried blood and the orthodontist's nightmare. He should have repulsed her, but when their eyes met again and he leant in, she found herself responding, opening her mouth so that she could taste the blood on his lips and trace the jagged edges of his deathly acute teeth. She'd been here before, but in a way she hadn't; she knew what was coming, but in way it was alarmingly new. Her pulse accelerated in anticipation and she nodded.

She wanted it.

A sigh of anticipation escaped her as his lips began their descent along her jaw line and down her neck. He paused at her scars and with a mumbled grumble switched to other, untainted side of her neck. He licked the sheen of sweat from her skin, drawing his tongue along the throbbing vein. She gasped as his teeth scraped against the site and he simultaneously ground himself into her groin. Her pulse was racing and her blood rising to the surface, heating her body with an illuminating glow.

She felt his hand on her arm, smoothing down the muscles and descending to take the pulse at her wrist before taking her hand. A twist of digits and palms and their fingers were twined, he squeezed her hand lightly and she responded with a final assent as his teeth punctured her skin.

-

-

-

-

Fragments of songs whistled through her mind. The tone frail and rasping like fragile shale crushing to dust underfoot. Remnants of childhood rhymes whispered to her, echoing a time when she was all naive innocence and her mother's embrace was warm and soothing.

His embrace was warm, his body heated with her blood. She relaxed against the solid weight of his chest, his hands on her bare shoulders and his legs jutting out on either side of her. He was speaking to her, the deep hum of his voice surrounding her, but she wasn't listening. She sighed and sank further against him, letting the lilt of his words wash over her and the vibrations in his chest percolate through her body and lull her into a contented snooze.

-

-

-

-

"You okay?"

She grinned at him but it paled into a grimace, she made a few not-word noises and in exacerbation pointed at her neck. "How'm I gonna explain this to Xander?"

His response was a smile, his lips barely moving but his forehead lifting and his eyes shining in the moonlight. "You don't"

"But -"

He silenced her with a kiss and she didn't resist, her body melted against his.

"I have turtlenecks."

"If it bothers you that much - here." He shrugged out of his duster and wrapped it around her, pulling the lapels of her coat up to cover her neck. "Better?"

(Warm)

She smiled. "Better."

TBC (Three chapters left) 


	19. Sunlight and SpringTide

  
**PART TWO**CHAPTER EIGHT: 

"Come _on_ Dawn." She eyeballed the staircase with impatience painting hot streaks from her cheeks to her temples.

"Relax, Love."

"Easy for you to say. You don't have to go see Dawn's principal."

He came up behind her; his hand smoothed over her hair and tingles of sensation permeated through her scalp. The tension draining out of her for a moment as she dissolved against him.

"You're the Slayer. You shouldn't let no bint in a matching twin-set get to you."

"She could do stuff."

He was obviously amused for she could hear his smile before he spoke. "Like what?"

"Like..." The words dissipated into the billowing blend of calm and tension as she concentrated on the cooling progress of his lips and hands. "She has the power of the Detention and the Expulsion."

"Oh, evil! She must be stopped." A short burst of laughter blew against her cheek and infected her with a giggle or two. "That's not what you're worried about, though."

(How does he always know?)

The giggles fizzled out into the warming air around them and she nodded. "She could be... make -"

"Make you feel bad. Tell you that you're a bad parent."

Tensing at the words, she felt his arms stiffen around her. She couldn't understand it, but there was almost something empathetic about it, as if - (I really need to stop with the over-analysis.)

He fingered at the scarf that covered her healing scar and she shivered at the sensation of his touch and his whispered words: "I could bite her."

She closed her eyes against the swarm, only for them to snap open in delayed reaction. "No... You don't -"

He chuckled his head leant in to kiss the covered bite mark. "Don't worry, my teeth are all yours."

The urge to roll her eyes struck her, but she lacked the energy and she waned against him once more only to be jolted by high pitched ringing. Making a small noise of frustrated irritation she stepped out of his arms to answer the telephone.

* * *

"You should really stop picking arguments with angry walls." Dawn smiled with a small circular motion of her head taking in the new bruises and healing cuts on Spike's face.

Her answer was a glare that held no ice. His pursed-lips pulled into a smirk and then a one-sided grin as he shrugged.

"That was Giles. He sounded..."

"Giles-y?"

Buffy rolled her eyes at her sister, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

"Yeah, but kinda like he has something very unpleasant to tell me. I don't know, it just gave me the wiggins."

"Maybe the world's ending." Dawn said with such supreme nonchalance that Buffy had to blink a few times before replying.

"You've been living on the Hellmouth too long, missy."

Dawn grinned. "Guilty."

"We'll get back to that matter later."

"I didn't do... " She began to protest, only to be stopped by Buffy's unyielding expression. "Bye, Spike."

"Bye, Bit."

"Start walking and I'll catch up."

Dawn shot Buffy another scowl before slinking out the door and striding away down the Revello Drive.

"You know, I like her more and more every day."

She turned to him, a wry smile lifting one side of her mouth. "Be nice."

"Aren't I always?"

"Funny that when I think 'Spike', 'nice' isn't the first word that comes to mind. 'Nice' doesn't even figure in the top twenty."

(Oh no.) He was advancing on her again, in slow and steady footfalls that echoed through her. "Then what is the first word you think of?"

"Uh -" She pre-empted him, hauling him into a kiss that melded their smiles together.

His lips, still slightly swollen from last night, were light on hers, parting her lips with soft teases until any thought of pain gave way to the sensations swaying them against each other and tugging at something inside of her. Then they were at her neck, cool fingers pushing away her scarf and touching at the tender skin and gently tapping out jolts of stimulation.

She gasped as his lips closed over the scar, arching into him with an anxious urgency. She heard something, a non-slayer sense perked at some stimulus. Something wasn't right. Was he laughing at her? No (Then what is that noise? That smell?)

Everything ceased with the realisation. Everything falling away until only instinct remained. She pushed him away with enough force to knock him back a few paces onto staggering feet.

Knock him back into the safety of the house's shade.

He stared at her, his eyes fogged with incomprehension until he noticed it too. The sizzling had ceased, but his skin was still smoking in places, grey mists of mortality rising from reddening marks on his hands and one side of his face.

And he laughed, properly laughed, grinning up at her with an expression she'd never seen before. On anybody.

She smiled, her body flushing with relief. (Relief?) Her brow furrowed with the implication. She had possibly saved his life and she was relieved.

Allowing the 'moment' to eke itself out for a few more seconds as they stared at each other, she waved before reaching in and closing the door.

* * *

She shivered. The air was charged around her. Nitrates fizzling and bustling against each other. There would be a storm, she reasoned, with thunder and lightening enough to rend the sky into tiny fragmentary remnants of what was once blue. She squinted up into the calm azure for a moment before the tinkling of that damned bell signalled her arrival at the Magic Shop.

Humming. Anya was humming. Little notes of instrumental synchronising with the fluttering of her pink feather duster. So content was she in her task, that she didn't even notice Buffy's entrance. Buffy frowned. Maybe Anya was lost to her capitalist instincts, or perhaps she had some kind of potential customer radar that Buffy, having no money on her, didn't figure upon.

Giles was distracted too. His fingers pressing into the bridge of his nose as he sighed over a pile of books.

There were vibes. Vibes outside in the ionic charged atmosphere, and in here too as Silences jittered and rebounded against each other. She worried for a moment that if she spoke her voice would carry no sound and instead would splinter into a thousand tiny tendrils that Silences would use as ribbons for some parade.

Thankfully Giles looked up and motioned to her before she had the chance to test the theory. She sat down at the table and glanced briefly at the books.

"Right, you're here. Anya?"

"Hmm?" Anya spun round, eagerly gripping the duster in between two sets of fingertips.

"There's not much else to do here. You may as well go."

Anya's gaze flitted to the till and back to Giles. She obviously didn't like the suggestion very much. Her eyes were wide, panicked almost. "But the money. I have to take care of the money..."

Giles nodded, he understood her well enough by now. "I'll do that Anya -"

"...Count it up and sort it out into neat piles, and put it into those cute little bags with the dollar symbols on them, and take them down to the bank..."

"Anya -"

"The money needs me, Giles."

"The money will be fine." Giles took a deep breath as if he was going to heave a particularly heavy sigh, only to pause and rethink. "How... how about I put it all in the safe and you can come in early tomorrow to do... what you do."

Anya glanced at the till again, her face the picture of conflict for a moment as she weighed up Giles' suggestion. A beam of consent lit up her features as she settled. "That would be agreeable... boss."

"Good." Giles let out half-a-sigh of relief. "Now get your things together and you can get home to Xander."

Anya nodded, beam still unwavering. "He will be happy to see me home early. We can go to bed and he can show me just how happy he is to see me." With one more hummed note of satisfaction as she waved the feathers over the sun leeched pages of a row of old volumes, she nodded once more and scurried behind the counter.

Buffy laughed despite her deflation. Giles was blushing, even though he should be infinitely used to Anya by now.

"Are you going to talk about Dawn being bad now?"

"Anya -"

"Or about Spike? I don't mind staying to talk about him."

"Anya. Please... just go."

* * *

Giles placed a comfortingly steamy coffee in front of her and she smiled as her hands enveloped the cup, the warmth seeping though into her hands. Smiling at her memories.

"How did it go?" Giles asked as he sat opposite her, shifting a few books to make room for his tea.

"Okay... I guess. The principal she was all kind reason. I didn't like her." She smiled wryly up at Giles. "At least with Snyder, you knew were you stood."

"Yes, quite." A small smile lifted his lips as he lifted the stringed tea bag out of his cup. "What did she have to say?"

Buffy blew out her cheeks and shrugged. "Oh, you know, lots of cleverly disguised lecture-y type things. Basically Dawn's been skipping school and not been doing teacher-y-pet thing like her homework-or even any work."

"Ah... I-it's understandable really, after your mother..."

Buffy looked down as her fingers began to turn the cup within the sphere of her grasp. "Dawn made some protests about things being better since Sp-" she cut herself off and glanced at Giles who acquiesced her with a nod. "The headmistress seemed to agree that her-how did she put it? 'Her progress has picked up of late, though not enough to be entirely convincing.'" Buffy groaned and slumped forward, her head resting on a still warm hand.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded and then shook her head, her eyes closing to in an effort to squeeze the tension out of her face. "Giles, she said stuff... stuff about social services, a-about taking Dawn away from me." She looked up at Giles, her eyes glassy and panicked. "I can't let that happen. She needs me, I need her... she's special."

"Yes, she's The K-"

"No. Not just that, she's my sister... she's me"

Giles nodded, his hand reaching over to squeeze her shoulder. "Yes. I know. It won't come to that, I'm sure."

"Could you... could you... have-talk to her?"

Her eyes were wide in appeal but Giles shook his head.

"I think that's you job now, don't you?"

"It's just... so hard."

"It's never easy, Buffy."

* * *

"Actually there was something-a number of things I had to tell you. But perhaps now is not the right time."

(Uh oh.) Buffy slouched, her eyebrows lifting in defiance. "Come on Giles. You can't get all curious on me and then keep quiet."

Giles let out a small laugh of acknowledgement. He knew her too well. "No, I suppose not. It's just I don't really know where to start -"

"How 'bout at number one and work through."

Another laugh, (what's he so nervous about?) "Very well. First of all, Angel called back -"

"Angel?" Buffy repeated in a surprised squeak.

"A while ago actually. Just with... everything, it slipped my mind."

"Mine too." She smiled and so did Giles.

"He wanted to check, see i-if... Spike had turned up."

Buffy's chest swelled with the effort to draw air. She hadn't realised she was holding her breath. She reached out for the potential comfort of her empty coffee mug, but it was cold now. "What did you tell him?"

"The truth."

"What?!" The coffee mug skidded along the tabletop as she pulled back, the scraping sound cutting into the tension in her gut and she cringed against it.

"Well when I say the truth, there may, in fact, have been a few... exclusions." A flicker of smile danced around Giles' eyes and Buffy laughed. "I told him that you dealt with him. That he did indeed show up wanting your blood..."

A swarm of warmth flushed Buffy's cheeks and her fingers shot to the scarf around her neck, she tried to cover up the gesture, but it was too late.

"...and it would appear that he got it."

"Giles, I-I... this is..."

"We've been here before, Buffy." Giles sighed and she dropped her eyes away from his disapproval. "Not too long ago, either. Well you're still here - and breathing no less - so am I to assume that Spike is dead, uh deader?"

She inhaled deeply as she looked up. He may be ashamed of her, but she realised that she wasn't ashamed of herself.

"No."

"No?"

"No."

* * *

"It was training."

"Training?" Giles asked with the air of someone who really didn't want to be here having this conversation. He took off his glasses and absently rubbed at the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt.

"Yes, training. You should be pleased - you wanted me to get back to it a-and he was more a challenge than Xander's dummy an-"

"Buffy, you don't have to explain yourself to me. I-in fact, the way this is going, I would really rather you didn't."

Buffy took a moment to see the hook she was being let off and smiled in relief. Giles nodded to her, a motion that said it all. That she was her own responsibility and that he trusted her. Silences hopped on to the table and provided a dance interval as she drifted into the melee of her thoughts. "You think Riley was right about me?"

Giles frowned, not expecting to hear that name. "In what way?"

Buffy shifted in her seat, slumping down even further. "What he said - when Dracula... about me being some kind of Vampire groupie?"

Giles cleared his throat. "I don't think he was one to really judge, considering the circumstances in which he left. Besides, Dracula had you under thrall... Did Spike -?"

She guffawed, humour shining in her eyes. "No..." she drew out the sound with incredulity (does he even know how to do that?) But then she deflated again; repeating the word more quietly as her eyes fell to stare at the invisible, spider-webbing patterns she was drawing on the table.

"I don't know if I can keep doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Giving myself to Vampires."

Giles leant forward to clean away the cups. "As I said... there were circumstances, thralls -"

"No, Giles." She pulled herself to sit upright, forced herself to look him in the eyes. "I don't mean The Master, or Dra--I mean _giving_ myself to Vampires."

"Oh."

"Yes... 'oh'."

TBC 


	20. No Shriving Time Allowed

  
**PART TWO**CHAPTER NINE: "So it's a once only deal?" "Yes." Giles clarified, fully leaning into Watcher-mode. "The opening of dimensions has to coincide with a number of astrological occurrences. Glory has but one chance to unleash hell on Earth. By the council's calculations, these phenomena shouldn't be in line for another few weeks yet." Buffy exhaled heavily. "That's good news, right?" "Yes. I-it would appear that the Watcher's Council came through after all." "And what happens when it doesn't work for her? I'm the first person she's gonna be after. I'm really not liking Dawn's idea about the line of dead people leading up to my door." Giles cringed as she had and something inside her squirmed and reassembled into an internal smile. "For once we are one step ahead and we can use the next few weeks to our advantage - plan a strategy and gather some kind of... force to use against her--No one is truly invincible. Everybody has a weak spot - an Achilles Heel. It's just a matter of discovering it." She thought of Spike harbouring the burns of the morning's sun and smiled. "Yeah... they do." 

* * *

"So, that's it?" She asked standing up and working the knots out of her back with a long stretch of a yawn. "Well there is... there is something else." (Oh no.) 

* * *

"Spike." The floor leaped and lurched under her feet as her chest heaved around an airless breath. An intense nausea clogged in her gut as her fingernails gripped at the tabletop. "I-I'm sorry, Buffy." "You're sure?" She asked with quick desperation, but she already knew. Knew from Giles' tone of voice when he had said 'there is something else'. Knew from the instinct that uncurled in her with vague yet certain knowledge. Knew from his multiple reminders of his innate nature - a nature she had surely known he wouldn't be able to deny. "I'm afraid so, Buffy. It--they began this week. There can be no other explanation." (No. Of course not.) There was only ever one explanation when it came to her love life: Vampire. She swallowed heavily against the lump in her throat. "I have to go." She stood with an exclamatory scrape back of her chair, her legs taking a few a few moments to recover from the numbness that was threatening to drown her in inertia. On her way to the door something caught her eye and she seized upon it, picking up the black onyx mould and examining it absently in a fruitless search for a price tag. "Tell Anya I'll pay for this... whenever." Her answer was a curt, and sympathetic nod and the pressing together of lips into something that could have been labelled a half-smile under different circumstances. She repeated the gesture and scowled as the bell signalled her exit. 

* * *

She silently railed at the inevitability of her life, at the sense of foreboding that was always validated in the most sickening ways. And there she was walking home in through slowly darkening streets as rain began to spittle down on her. There would be a storm and for once she was grateful for the dramatic irony. A weight of dread pitted into her solar plexus as she neared Revello Drive, her fingers beginning to pain against the object in her hand. 

* * *

Asleep. Again. Dead to the world. Dead to her? (I lied.) Lying prostrate on the sofa in a pose that made known his undead status. His face burrowed in cushions, his body preternaturally lax in a position that would have suffocated anyone who needed to breathe. One arm sprawled over his head and reaching out to a beam of fading light. Fingers twitching in parody of a cardinal rhythm. She hated him at that moment and concentrated the feeling in a bitter swell that she used to fuel her assault. "Get up!" The kick to the sofa had no effect and her hands fisted in frustration, one set of fingers white-knuckling around the black object. She tried again. "**Get. Up**!" He jolted with a muffled yelp, shook by the reverberating force and hollow echoes of her kick. His head and then body twisted and one blue eye frowned at her. "What is it?" A surge of white-blue rage bubbled up and emerged from her throat in a bitter laugh. "Everything." He knew. Knew something what was wrong. She could sense the instincts kicking in with swooping scopes of his mind. Did he leave his blood out to congeal? Had he forgotten to take his boots off? His inverted gaze fell to his bare feet and settled there. "You know." She didn't have anything in her. No words, no energy to transmute into sound, nothing. She nodded and so did he. "I... It was only a few. Only a bit." She backed away from him as he stood. Afraid of what he might do, afraid of what she might do, afraid of him and herself. Conflicting impulses swarmed, moulded and melted inside of her, fading away to nothing. No action other than her continued backing-away from him. He met her step for step, not closing but preserving the distance. There was something in his stance she didn't recognise, his shoulders tense and his body thrumming with... something. "I know I said I wouldn't, but -" "You just couldn't help yourself." She finished for him, her eyes narrowing against the sickeningly sudden understanding. "I didn't want to help myself." He met her eyes but there was no defiance there, his gaze wavered slightly as if unsure of his focus and she recognised it finally. Fear. "But I didn't-It was only a bit from each. I didn't kill anyone -" "**Yes!** You did." The surge of air rushing out of her stressed each word with desperation for him to understand as she did. Her heartbeat quickened with panic as she searched his eyes for a futile attempt to find some kind of comprehension. She tried again, weaker this time. "Yes... you did." Her shoulders rolled forward in defeat and she fell back against the wall. "I'm sorry, Buffy." It was all it took: three words and she straightened back up and back into herself, staring at him in incredulous anger and hatred and - "Who are you sorry for, Spike?" The steadiness of her voice surprised her and she realised she was borrowing something from the Buffy of years ago, from the Buffy she feared dead. "Me? Yourself? 'Cos you sure as hell aren't sorry for that person you killed. For their families." He flinched and her eyes seized upon it, a perk of hope rising to the forefront and keening on his every move. A hand came up to run through his hair and any minute trace of discord was wiped out with the neutralising of his features. Nothing. (This is what he is. Cold. Remorseless. A killer.) She shivered in the confines of a momentary hesitation of silence. "I don't... I can't..." "You can't imagine how they feel." It was a statement, but her ears heard the plea in her own words, knew that she hadn't achieved shutdown just yet. She hated herself. Hated that she didn't hate him. Silence engorged with the swell of her heartbeat and magnified the distance between them. He was lost to her now... surely? But then he spoke. "They'd feel... like you and me." She choked on a dry sob of what? Relief? Derision? He eyes flitted to the sofa he had helped purge of negative associations. "Then why?" He shrugged. He really didn't know. All in the moment he looked so lost and out of place and she found herself wanting to shout to him, remind him that this was his place, his home. "Do you want me to go?" (Oh God.) She blinked against her liquid vision and shook her head vehemently. "No, no, never. Don't ever ask me that again." "I don't know if I can -" "Couldn't you at least try?" She asked against the resistance of her tight chest. "Why?" "Because it'd make this easier." She heard something drop with a hollow din and in flashback pictured her weakening fingers losing grasp of the black object. She followed, slumping to the floor and belatedly becoming aware of the deflation and ebbing away of any resolve. Wide eyes fell to stare at the abstraction of carpet. Only aware of shapes and colours she saw something familiar come to her in a flash of pale skin, a triangle of black and a piercing dot of blue she used as her fixed point as she began to retrace the map of herself. "It's never easy, Buffy." Her gaze lifted to his as he sank down in front of her and reached out to skin that craved his touch. She exhaled with a heavy sigh as he made contact leaning in to him and covering the distance and letting his body absorb the tremors of her own. His hands were in her hair, brushing it back and his lips on her face, kissing her softly, fiercely. Gentle soothing caresses alternating to desperate pressures against her flesh as if he couldn't decide which way forward. She saw it then, in his eyes. She felt it: his desperation. He was so desperate for her to forgive him. Didn't he know that if she hadn't already, he'd be dead? "I just know." He stilled, his head pulling to look at her. "What?" She shook her head and made it known in other ways. In the way her lips touched his, in the way her fingers splayed against his cheek, in the way she rocked her hips against the hardening in his groin. 

* * *

"I..." He trailed off with a gasp, the echoes of his every sound surrounding and trickling through her. She trembled, her insides shivering against the confines of her body as if struggling to externalise, to pull her inside out. Grasping at his shoulders she felt his release with the uncoiling of tension in the muscles under her kneading fingers. Her forehead dipped to rest against his as they recovered and she allowed her ragged breath to even out into the cadence being set by the rhythm of the letters he was painting with his fingertips on her back. She sighed. Quelling against him, her fingers began to trace something intrinsic on his scalp. 

* * *

"What's this?" He asked, an amusing glimmer of boy-like curiosity gleaming in his eyes as he picked up the fallen shape. He examined it, turning it over and around and observing how the curve of its hollow captured and reflected the light. "It's for you." She admitted almost shyly, her eyes dropping to take in their entangled limbs and back up to his smiling eyes. "It's an ashtray." He chuckled, his chest and shoulders shaking with it and she felt herself smile until his face furrowed and became pensive. "You don't like it?" He shook his head, a quirk of a smile twitching at his lips. "I love it. But if it's a present - you have to give it to me." Rolling her eyes, she took it from his proffering hands. Only there was something in the way he held it out to her, almost challenging her to admit that it was more than just an ashtray. She cleared her throat and wriggled into a straight-backed pose, her eyes squinting at the ceiling for inspiration before meeting his. "I saw this today and it reminded me of you. I would like you to have it." He smiled as he leaned in for it, drawing his fingers over hers as he accepted the gift. "Thank you. I'll get you something." She lifted an eyebrow and he shrugged. His eyes dipping in the way hers had and drawing him into himself. "I am sorry." "I know." She whispered and pulled him back against her. Gasping at the sensation of his mouth on her neck, she moved with him as he shuffled on top of her and when she opened her eyes the world stopped. (No!) He tensed with her, his head lifting to frown at her. "What?" She made no move and he followed her panicked gaze over to the mantle piece. Over to the glowing, swarming, warning spheres. "She's coming." TBC (One or two chapters left - depending on length) 


	21. End of Days

Okay here it is. You may think your eyes are deceiving you, but no, honestly, truly, I finally finished this bugger. So, so, so, so (etc.) sorry for the delay. I'm lazy and easily distracted by real-life issues but better late than never... right?  
  
**PART TWO** FINAL CHAPTER  
  
A perfect image, framed by the window edges, obliterated and blocked from her view by the black. There was no perfect moment, no photo image, but the black. Behind the eyes she clenched to relieve the burn there were perfect images of friendly smiles and familial warmth and the occasional heart- stopping recollected snapshot of impassioned eyes captured in a gasp of orgasm.  
  
There were moments she could isolate and pair up to the corresponding pang of dread, guilt, pain, grief and loss that either defined or followed. There was always worse to follow. But they were running now, speeding away from the assured dread, guilt, pain and loss that lay-in-wait back in Sunnydale. This was no escape, only preparation. Her time-out and the only way she knew of getting Dawn safe. Get Away From The Hellmouth. From Hell.  
  
- - - -  
  
She liked to watch him drive-ever since that first night when she had drifted in and out of consciousness and spent her most lucid moments furtively watching him under heavy lids. He never acknowledged it, but she had known that he was aware of her every gaze.  
  
He always knew but now, as always, there was no softening of his determined profile, clenched jaw and stiff arms--except for the split seconds he took to take habitual glances of a rear-view mirror that revealed nothing but a sullen and scared Dawn. Then his lips would part slightly as a frown knit at his forehead before his eyes weighted back to the road. But he said nothing, could say nothing to make this any better.  
  
She twisted in her seat to seek out Dawn's hand and found out at the end of a slack, yielding arm. Dawn met her eyes with a tight smile that paled into a grimace that quaked a small tear from glassy eyes. A tear she was quick to dismiss with a sniffle and a wipe of the heel of her palm.  
  
"How far is it now?"  
  
"Not long now, Dawn." She assured with a squeeze of her sisters hand.  
  
The interludes were never long enough. What she wanted was ever-lasting summer. But that was a temporary peace that would only descend with the ashes of yet another averted apocalypse.  
  
- - - -  
  
This had to be as surreal as it got; even in the heyday of the Angel hell that was frought with an unreality etched in her silent screams of 'please don't let this be real', there was still hope until she pushed the sword through his gut. Now there seemed only finality; she went into the fray, beat the bad guy in the nick of time and all was right with the world for a few months.  
  
But what could be right after this? The two sisters cocooned in shadow and trusting the 'minimum safe distance' calculations to a demon. As soon as she thinks she has life figured out something or someone happens to raises the bar. Something like this. The three of them fleeing together in a mockery of a family unit.  
  
(Family) The word twisted in her gut and forced her to think, yet again, of those left behind - of Giles and Willow and Xander and Anya. Their voices - how they understood, understood without question what she had to do. Get. Dawn. Safe. But also understanding in the same breath, that in doing so left them open and vulnerable to attack, with nothing but a box of magic tricks that would stand no stead against the true might of a Hell-God's fury.  
  
(Please let them be safe.) They would be... surely? Glory had no idea about Xander's place - did she? It was only for the night. She only had one night.  
  
Her eyes fell on the dashboard to take in the two spheres that had separated them from Glory and certain death, gave them just enough room for manoeuvre, for getting Dawn safe.  
  
- - - -  
  
"We're here."  
  
"Mmm...?" Dawn mumbled as she unfurled herself from the back seat and out of a sleepless rest. She fingered at the hole in the paint she had chipped her way at during the journey. Squinting through the gap she met with only dark night.  
  
"Angel." Buffy declared, glancing at Spike just in time to catch his flinch.  
  
"Right, well. I'll wait here then shall I?" He shifted in his seat and began patting down his pockets for cigarettes. "Guard the car and all that."  
  
"The car will be fine, Spike."  
  
"Yeah," Dawn agreed with a forced cough of laughter, "who'd wanna steal this lump o' junk-heap meat?"  
  
Spike shot a glare at Dawn through the mirror. With the effect somewhat lessened by his lack of reflection, his features fell away into a grimace, the cigarette search forgotten. "Seriously, I need to, uh, check the oil and... all sorts of other stuff you women wouldn't understand because you don't speak 'car'."  
  
Buffy felt her lips curl despite the dread settling and doubling in her gut. "Spike," She drew the name out, almost as a tease, or what could have been under different circumstances. "You're not scared, are you?"  
  
He pffted the notion with a protest of: "No!" before settling back on reason, "No, I... I think you need to go in alone - just you and the kid."  
  
Dawn's exaggerated clearing of the throat set him off on an eye-roll and a half-hearted back track. "'Young-adult brat' then. That better?"  
  
It was Dawn's turn to mark mock annoyance with a dramatic sigh and shuffle for the door.  
  
"No! Dawn, wait. Just in case."  
  
"Okay, okay!" Dawn moaned in exaggerated petulance that she just didn't have the heart for. She did the moves well enough though: her arms folding, her lip pouting and her eyes lifting up to the inner roof. The tableau was soon interrupted by the spontaneous flutter of a giggle that escaped from Dawn's throat.  
  
Buffy blinked at her sister, "Dawn?"  
  
"I was just, just looking," she pointed upwards. "Spike, why are there day- glo stars on your roof?"  
  
Buffy looked up and indeed, there were hundreds of tiny glow-in-the-dark star stickers arranged in intricate constellations above their heads. So tiny that she had never noticed them before and so tiny that even Spike seemed to have forgotten their existence, even though his face gave away enough to know that he was responsible for them. She stared at him as he gaped up at them, his eyes glazing and widening with wonder and the flood of past memories. Finally, in a barely audible voice he admitted: "Dru used to see the stars all the time - read entire fortunes in merest twinkle of one star. I put these up to confuse her."  
  
"Did it work?" Trust Dawn to ask.  
  
He considered this, his eyes glazing in the moment. "I think the stars were inside her. It's what it felt like sometimes when we-" He glanced quickly at Dawn to make sure she hadn't understood. "Never mind."  
  
"Spike!" Buffy stressed through clenching teeth, desperate to get the smirk off his face, desperate for him to be in the here and now and with her. "I need you in there with me."  
  
It worked, in an instant she had his full attention, but then again she always had even when they were fighting to the death. Even so, he wasn't going to make this easy on her, wasn't going to give in every time. She knew the stubbornness - recognised it well. "Yeah so Angel can stake me on sight, great plan."  
  
"I won't let him, okay?" She sighed a slow breath to clear her thoughts. If she wasn't even sure why his presence was so important to her, how could she hope to communicate it to him? "Look, I know it'd be easier if I went in on my own, if Angel never knew about you. I know he's gonna big with the accusations and disappointment faces... But I don't care - I need you... In there. With me."  
  
He met her level gaze with raised eyebrows and said it: "You don't trust me not to leave you."  
  
"I..." She was at a loss for words and since her silence only confirmed the truth in his statement, she decided to go with it, letting it ripple out to fill the vehicle's bubble and resound upon them.  
  
"Looks like I'm coming in then."  
  
She turned to him, her instincts told her that she was smiling but it was only confirmed by the mock-glare he shot at her.  
  
"Well that's better than pouty-face I suppose."  
  
"I was not pouting!" She defended, suddenly giddy despite the situation.  
  
"We're too."  
  
"No, I think you're mistaken, I nev-"  
  
He silenced her with a kiss, gently sucking her bottom lip into his mouth he nipped it gently between his teeth. "Yes, you we're and I love it." He mumbled against her lips before pulling away sharply and using the momentum to push himself out of the car.  
  
- - - -  
  
"I don't get it." Spike paused a few feet before the door and gazed upwards. "I mean this is supposed to be some undercover agency he's running, yeah?" He glanced at Buffy and Dawn a moment for silent confirmation. "So why the bloody big hotel?" He lit a cigarette, took a drag and flicked it away, a one-sided grin catching the glare of a street light. "He must be compensating for something."  
  
"Ha, ha, and on with the not-so-funnies-now can we stop procrastinating and get in there?" she snapped, her stomach setting against a stone of irritation that only partially masked the fear.  
  
"'Procrastinating'? Big word for you there, pet-"  
  
"Spike... *Please*!"  
  
He nodded, shuffling forward and reaching for the door. "Is this still counted as a public place?" He mused to himself before pulling at the door. "Soon find out." When he looked back her something in his face made Buffy pause a moment and smile. "After you."  
  
- - - -  
  
It was strange. Stranger than the fact that she'd never been here before but strange when she considered that this was Angel's life now; that he'd moved on so completely. No longer for him a small office and darkened basement living quarters but a proper business in a proper establishment with people at his side. People she'd never met before. Like the black shaven-headed guy pacing the reception area and spinning a battle-axe effortlessly in his hands.  
  
"Er... hi."  
  
The guy's head shot up as if on alert. "Hey there, you hopeless?" he asked with perturbing enthusiasm, "uh, sorry... I mean helpless." A short laugh and a smile as he strode up to greet them, any menace draining away with every step. "We can usually help but I'm not so sure about today."  
  
Okay, that made her nervous. "What's today?"  
  
His nose crinkled as he shrugged. "Today is a bad day."  
  
Buffy nodded and sighed. "Yeah, I got that memo."  
  
"What, you *know*?"  
  
"Know?"  
  
"About Cordy?"  
  
Her attention was piqued despite her growing annoyance. "What about her? Is she-is she okay?"  
  
Another shrug, this time weightier. "Well that's... that's exactly what we don't know. There was this thing with a portal, and zoom, she's gone-Hey, wait a minute - who are you people?"  
  
"Buffy?"  
  
Her eyes shot to him and she froze, suddenly aware of how this looked, suddenly ashamed of the presence she could feel at her side.  
  
"This is Buffy? The Buffy?"  
  
"Yeah," Angel said, his eyes still on Buffy and full of questions. "Gunn, this is Buffy; her sister, Dawn and..." His gaze hardened as it settled on: "Spike."  
  
"What?! The Spike?" Gunn's face set and his body stiffened as he glared at the figure of offence. "The Vampire Spike that Cordy told me about?"  
  
Spike rolled his eyes, annoyed rather than threatened by Gunn and Angel's stares. "Yeah the one and only. But look that's not the issue here, you see there's-"  
  
"Don't you think it *should* be the issue? You-you're the Vampire Slayer - why haven't you staked his murderous, undead butt already?" Gunn's stare was full of accusation that she could take from him; it was the knowing that if she looked at Angel she'd get the same intense glare and that it would make her sick to her stomach.  
  
"He's... he's..." (He's what?) Harmless? Certainly not that. He wasn't even 'okay' by their standards. "He's with me." She turned to Angel, taking in his confused denial. "He's with me, Angel and he's not here to hurt me o-or Dawn, or any of you, okay?"  
  
"How can that be okay? He's... he's a killer, Buffy. H-how can you-?"  
  
"Hey!" Spike protested, briefly and uselessly, as there was nothing he could deny.  
  
She cringed, closing her eyes against the tone and implications in Angel's voice. "Angel, please! This is not what I came here for." Once she was acquiesced that Angel had relented a notch, only a notch, she continued. "There's this woman, this Hell God - she's after us... after Dawn."  
  
"Dawn?"  
  
Dawn took a step forward, ready to deliver the exposition bit, her voice flat with futility. "I'm the key.Yes," she shot a look at Gunn, "The Key."  
  
"The Key to what?" Angel asked, suddenly all business and reminding her, just a touch, of Giles.  
  
"To everything - to all dimensions. Glory wants to use her to get home-only she doesn't know it's Dawn yet." Her face softened as she implored Angel with her gaze. "And I want to keep it that way. I need you, please, to keep Dawn safe. Just until... until this is over." (It's never over.)  
  
And she knew. Knew suddenly, in Angel's stance and the way his eyes flickered to an office door, that he couldn't, wouldn't help. "Buffy, I... we... Cordy, she's missing, we need to go find her. I'm not sure how we can..."  
  
"I know about Cordy and I'm sorry, really I am, but can't you do both? Look for Cordelia *and* keep Dawn safe?" (Can't you do everything like I used to think you could?) Had it really only been a few weeks since he came to her mother's funeral, full of sympathy and offers to stay and be there for her. It was crazy to think how much had changed in those few weeks, but then here she was with her sister and lover vampire in tow stupidly trying to take him up on an offer that had really expired a long time ago.  
  
"I don't kn-Wesley is working on a way to get to her. I need to go - un- unless... Gunn?"  
  
This is what it came to. He had a whole different set of priorities now and Cordelia cam before her. She understood but it still hurt. I guess they really were hopeless. "It's okay... Gunn. I couldn't ask you to. It's okay, we'll think of something else." And she turned to go.  
  
"But-"  
  
"Spike, don't!"  
  
But he stood firm and in her way. "Buffy, there is noth-"  
  
"Spike, we will think of something."  
  
But he didn't relent until Dawn pulled stepped over to him and pulled lightly on the arm of his duster, her mouth forming a line. He seemed to appreciate her attempt at a smile enough as she tugged him towards the door and he responded.  
  
"I'm sorry, Buffy."  
  
She glanced back at Angel and nodded. "I'm sorry too." Never did the word 'sorry' carry so many connotations for her. For them.  
  
"I hope you find her."  
  
- - - -  
  
"So." Spike said, the sound of slammed doors still echoing silently through the car. "What now?"  
  
"I... I don't kn-"  
  
"What about Dad?" Dawn offered leaning forward so to make sure she was heard. "Dad's in L.A."  
  
"No, Dad's in Spain with his secretary, Dawn."  
  
"Oh,"  
  
The sound was so quiet and timid it broke her heart. She turned to face her sister and reached out to stroke her hair. "I'm sorry. I just don't know what to do and it scares me." Her fingers settling on Dawn's cheek for a still moment. "But I'll get you safe... no matter what."  
  
- - - -  
  
It was a nice sight. At a time like this she was grateful for it. Grateful hat she could look on the sight of Dawn sleeping off her exhaustion and smile to herself. But like all good moments, it never lasted.  
  
"*This* is your plan?" Spike hissed over the sound of the rolling engine and diverted her attention. "You keep Dawn safe by taking her back to *Sunnydale*? By delivering her into the arms of the crazy Hell bitch that's intent on ripping her inside-out?"  
  
(Home.) "I need to get back to the others. We can all protect her - together." All of them together. "It's the only way I know how."  
  
"But -"  
  
"Just drive." She snapped angrily. It was an order with a bite of a threat but he obeyed, turning his eyes back towards the road with no more a small sigh.  
  
- - - -  
  
The car pulls up at a gas station and she gets out to pump the gas because it's daylight. She wonders briefly how it got light so soon, but the feel of the morning sun on her tired skin is too delightful to question. Something is wrong here, more wrong than going back into hell but with the breeze swarming around her and alleviating the stress, she doesn't want to question.  
  
Not until he gets out of the car and she sees him. In sunlight. All surrounded by white-yellow light and she smiles, really smiles... before she remembers.  
  
"Spike, what are you -? Get back in the car before -"  
  
"No," he states so sternly that it causes her to flinch. "Not until you see."  
  
And she does see. See him. Sees the smoke and the eruptions of fire, his skin being eaten away by the flames. She wants to shout, tell him to get back into the car but her heart is in her mouth and she can't talk - can't take her eyes off him. She desperately lurches for him, dropping the pump and spilling gas that only fuels the fire and he's dust - dust filtering between her fingertips as it settles to the ground.  
  
- - - -  
  
She awoke with a start, her hand grasping around something sold and encased in leather and when she looked she found him staring at her, eyebrows lifted and the question in the droop of his bottom lip before he spoke.  
  
"Bad dream?"  
  
She took a deep breath, loosening her strangle hold on his arm and letting her back relax against the seat again. "Something like that." Rolling down the window she stared out at the sky. "It's so dark."  
  
"Yeah, it's always darkest before the -"  
  
(Dawn.) "Stop the car." She knew.  
  
"What?" Spike's voice full of surprise and a bite of hope that only confirmed her sudden revelation. "You thought of something, somewhere else?"  
  
"Someone." She bit her lip, not sure whether it was safe to smile. (Not safe yet.) "Where are we?"  
  
"About a mile from home."  
  
(He calls it home.) "Perfect. Stop the car." She looked out the window as the car slowed to a stop, the blurred scenery identifiable finally in stillness. Once the vehicle was stationary she pushed open the door and got out - stretching out her muscles and arching her head up to the sky. She waited for the sound of his door before walking towards the car's trunk and opening it.  
  
"Care to fill me in, Love?"  
  
She shrugged, wincing slightly against the knots in her shoulders. "Okay, it's simple really. I'm going back alone, you're taking Dawn somewhere. Somewhere safe and far way."  
  
A moment's silence while she pondered the contents of the trunk and he questioned, first his own and then her, sanity.  
  
"*What*?!"  
  
"You heard." She risked a look at him and shrugged once more.  
  
"I don't-are you *mad*? Seriously have you just gone completely off your rocker? Because that's what it sounds like to me. Great plan is that, yeah - leave your little sis' in the capable hands of a bloodsucking monster while you go off and get yourself killed."  
  
Buffy crossed her arms and faced him. "Are you finished?"  
  
He choked on a laugh. "I could go on."  
  
"Please *don't*. Spike, this is me - once I've made up my mind there's not much beside the end of the world-and, hey, already there-that will change it." There was a begrudging assent to her point. "I'm not leaving my sister with just any 'bloodsucking monster', Spike, I'm leaving her with you."  
  
"Oh yeah, big difference there."  
  
"Yeah. There is." She took a step closer to him, inclining her head to force him to meet her eyes. "What makes you different is the way I feel about you."  
  
She had to stop at the look on his face; the shock and wonder so clear and present in a way that made him look so fragile for the briefest moment. Another snapshot for her collection "I trust you. I know you haven't always given me reason to, but I still do.  
  
"Dawn is my world, okay - you know that. She's a part of me and I love her more than anything. You think I'd leave her with you if I didn't know, know that you'd take care of her?"  
  
His gaze flickered and there was an air of defeat about him, that there was no way he could argue with her, make her reconsider. There was no question of saying 'no' though. "I don't want you to go back there alone."  
  
"I won't be alone. And I can fight a whole lot better knowing Dawn is safe... with you-God I know how strange that sounds, how strange this is, but it *feels* right."  
  
"And you can't think of anything else? This is your last resort?"  
  
She had to touch him them, make contact. "No. Not last resort." She traced the arch of his cheek with her thumb and kissed him. "Say yes, please."  
  
He laughed then, his eyes glassy and reflecting starlight. "I thought I already had." He met her eyes and she had to reconsider notions of ground and reality for a second. "Alright then, yes, I'll protect her... 'til the end of the world and all that. "  
  
"Oh God." There was urgency in the way she clutched at him, a sure sense that there was chance she could never see him again. He felt it too, he must have to kiss her like that, like his life, or un-life, whatever, depended upon it.  
  
- - - -  
  
"Promise you'll be okay?" Dawn cried as she sank into Buffy, clinging to her and gripping fistfuls of clothing.  
  
There was something barring her throat, something that couldn't let her promise, couldn't lie. "You'll be okay, Dawn. It will all be okay."  
  
- - - -  
  
"Axe?"  
  
"Check."  
  
"Sword?"  
  
"Check?"  
  
"Here, what's this?" Spike said leaning into the trunk and heaving at some object. "Bloody heavy thing."  
  
"What?" Buffy reached for what was troubling him and picked it up with ease. "This?"  
  
"Uh, yeah. Bloody-heavy-mallet thing?"  
  
She twisted the weapon to catch the waning street light. "Troll hammer - check." Dawn was fast approaching.  
  
"Right now, do me." He smirked and she had to smile.  
  
"Glowy sphere thingies?"  
  
"Check."  
  
"Car with gas in tank."  
  
"Er..." he ran round and peered at the dashboard before coming back to her, "check."  
  
"My sister."  
  
Dawn hovered into view and forced a smile. "Check."  
  
"Goodbye kiss?"  
  
His face clouded and any good spirits melted away. "You'll bring her back in a few days. Once you know it's all... over."  
  
He nodded. "Yeah."  
  
Peering at the sky the first tinges of sunlight were beginning to appear over the horizon and she felt the suddenly urge to get him safe in the car, safe with Dawn and safely driving away. There was time for another hug for Dawn, a glance and attempt to memorise every aspect of her face.  
  
And then his goodbye kiss, soft short and a new flavour of bitter- sweetness.  
  
"Thankyou."  
  
- - - -  
  
She watched them pull away, saw the white palm of Dawn's palm as she waved out the window, heard her cries of 'I love you, Buffy'. But nothing of him except the stopping of the car for a moment before he sped on.  
  
Waited until the car was a blip on the horizon before picking up her bag of weapons and walking home back to her friends, back to her job.  
  
She knew she was there when she reached the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign. A new one as they had to be replaced every time he came back to town. She smiled momentarily and set her eyes forward.  
  
THE END  
  
(Phew!)  
  
Thanks to everyone who has read all this and to those of you who have stuck with this through my writer's block. I don't blame you if you were thinking anything along the lines of 'Who does she think she is? J.K. Rowling?!' But thanks to all of you who have liked this and made the experience worthwhile. You know who you are. But I should say special thanks to Olga who has been pretty-much the closest thing I have to a beta reader.  
  
Bye Bye. 


End file.
